


Operation: Andromeda

by ConsultingFangirl (DestinyWolfe)



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate season 8, Because Of Course What Else Would You Expect, Case Fic, Cruise Ships, Drug Dealing, Drugs, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams, Friends to Lovers, Hawaii, Hurt Danny, Hurt Steve McGarrett, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Mutual Pining, Pining, Rescue Missions, Romance, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Steve Doing Dangerous Shit, True Love, Undercover, Undercover As Gay, Undercover Missions, Undercover as Married, Undercover as a Couple, drug dealers, season 8 AU, two idiots in love, will add more tags if necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-02-22 22:20:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 43,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13176408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestinyWolfe/pseuds/ConsultingFangirl
Summary: Steve and Danny go undercover as a married couple to catch a dangerous drug lord who is using cruise ships to smuggle cocaine off O'ahu. Unfortunately, their carefully-crafted operation doesn’t go according to plan. At all.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone! So this fic got deleted while I was trying to delete another of my fics, and I'm finally getting around to re-uploading it. I'm doing some minor edits to the fourteen chapters I already have written, while working on the last few chapters. I'm planning to upload one chapter every day or two. 
> 
> To everyone who commented/read/left kudos on the story when I first posted it: Y'all are the best! And you're the reason I'm uploading this fic again. I'm beyond thrilled and flattered that so many people found and liked this story; your kind words and compliments and encouragements really helped me stay inspired! Much love to you all. Mahalo. <3

**Chapter One**

“Okay, if you’re gonna do that in here, I’m going to have to insist you keep the door fully closed.”

“Did you say something?” Danny stuck his head out of the bathroom, a bottle of hairspray in one hand and a comb in the other. “No? Good.” He disappeared back behind the half-closed door. The overpowering smell of hair products did not.

Steve sighed loudly. He stretched his legs out, slumping in the overstuffed armchair beside the room’s ocean-view window. They were only half a day into a week-long undercover op aboard the _MS Andormeda,_ and already, Danny was driving him insane. In more ways than one—he seriously wasn’t looking forward to sharing a bed. For so many reasons. 

“Hey, have you seen my texturizer?” Danny called.

“I don’t even know what that is.” Steve straightened up in his chair, looking around the suite. “Listen, Danny, dinner starts in—” he glanced down at his watch, “—just under five minutes. If we don’t get up there ASAP, we’ll lose our strategic position. Unless you wanna do surveillance from across the dining room, I suggest you move your ass.”

“What do you want, Steve?” Danny reemerged. His hair was slicked back, his perfectly-tailored suit belted, buttoned, and smooth. “You can’t rush art.”

Steve pushed himself out of the chair. He regained his feet, smoothing down his own jacket and dress slacks. “Art?” He took in Danny’s appearance with a sweeping glance. “It’s dinner, Danny. Not the Oscars.” 

“I wanna look nice. Is that a crime now?” Danny lifted his eyebrows in a clear challenge. “What are you, fashion police?”

Steve rolled his eyes. He moved past his partner, down the short passage leading from the suite’s bedroom to the door. 

“And for your information,” Danny continued, as Steve opened the door and led the way out into the hallway beyond, “this isn’t just dinner, this is _formal night_ on a fancy cruise. If you’re so worried about the op going well, we’ll need to blend in. And, uh, and since we’re supposed to be married, I’m definitely going to rip on your style choices all night. Sorry, babe. Part of the cover. Married couples fight all the time.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard for us,” said Steve. “And what do you mean, ‘style choices?’” He shot Danny a side-long look of disbelief. “I’m wearing a black tux, Danny. Just like you.”

“Well, for one, your bow tie is crooked.” Danny pointed out the offending accessory with a sly smile. “For two, your hair looks like you went swimming in sewage and then towel-dried it in a bathroom with no mirrors. Oh, and, um, you’re walking like someone shoved a stick up your ass. Relax. We’re tourists, remember? Lose the military look.”

“Relax?” Steve scoffed. “You relax.”

“Nice comeback. Very eloquent.”

“Are we really gonna keep this up all night, Danno? Bickering like an old couple?”

“No,” Danny replied, “we’re gonna do this right now, in this empty hallway, _before_ we get to the dining room. And yeah, probably in the dining room, too, because you, my friend, are an animal when it comes to food. Well, all the time. But especially then.”

“Okay, you know what, Danny?” Steve reached the elevator and stopped, turning to face his partner. He punched the ‘up’ button with vicious intent. “You’re doing it again. You’re hurting my feelings, and honestly, I don’t see how I’m any worse than you. At least I’m not the one who spilled an entire bottle of barbeque sauce in Grover’s lap last week.”

“That was an accident,” Danny shot back. “It happened once. I can think of ten times off the top of my head that you embarrassed me in a restaurant in the last year alone.”

“Oh, really? Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Okay then, let’s hear ‘em.” The elevator opened, and Steve stepped inside. There were five other people inside: an older couple, and a young, fresh-faced couple shadowed by a boy who looked to be their son. Danny followed him inside. He jabbed the button labeled “dining deck,” then stepped back to lean against the rail. 

“Well?” Steve prompted after a few seconds. He spreads his hands, palms-up, and fixed Danny with an expectant stare.

“What, right now? In front of all these nice people?” Danny gestured around at the silent (but clearly curious) people in the elevator. “You want them to hear about the time you fed wings to that guy’s service dog under the table and got us kicked out of the bar? Huh? Is that what you want?”

The old couple looked like they were fighting back smiles. The younger man openly chuckled, but turned the sound to a cough when his wife purposefully bumped him with her elbow. Their kid grinned up at Danny, leaning back until his shock of brown hair pressed against his mother’s leg.

“What’s the matter with you?” Steve said, once the elevator doors slid shut behind them. They walked side-by-side down yet another luxuriously-carpeted and elegantly-adorned hallway. Up ahead, a sign pointed toward the dining room, announcing the night’s formal dress code. “Huh? What’s your problem?”

Danny huffed. “You’re stealing my line, babe.”

They rounded a bend in the hall and reached the stand where a man in a smart, classy red button-down coat and slacks was checking people in. The line to enter the dining room was blissfully short; Steve glanced down at his watch again, and was surprised (and relieved) to find that they weren’t late after all. In fact, they were a few minutes early according to their reservation ticket.

Steve reached the stand and handed the red-suited man their ticket. The man glanced down at it, then offered a bright, welcoming smile. “Ross and Russell Lancaster?” he asked, looking to Danny and Steve for confirmation. 

Steve nodded in agreement. “That’s us. Do we just go right in?”

The man behind the stand jerked his head once, up and down. “That’s right. Your table is number 17. Nice view, if I’m remembering correctly.” His smile brightened impossibly. “I hope you enjoy your meal, gentlemen.”

“Thanks, thank you.” Danny clapped a hand on Steve’s shoulder as he passed him, striding through a little glass archway and into the dining room. “C’mon, babe.”

Nodding his thanks to the check-in guy, Steve followed his partner. Together, they headed for their assigned table. With any luck, Steve thought, their target would be nearby. And even if he didn’t show up… well, Steve had nothing against this just being a night out at a fancy restaurant with Danny. Whatever that might entail. 

“Here we go.” Danny pointed out their table. It was located beside an enormous glass window. The view was incredible—since the ship had just left port, the bright lights of Honolulu were still clearly visible from the ship’s stern. Danny arranged himself in one of the seats, and Steve took the seat across from him.

A waiter immediately appeared with menus. He asked if they wanted drinks, jotted down their orders, then disappeared. 

Steve leaned back in his chair. He turned his head to look back out at his home city. Honolulu flickered and glowed, shedding its multicolored light across the roiling waters of the ocean. An unexpected pang of nerves hit. This operation, as carefully planned as it was, would be about as easy as walking on the edge of a well-sharpened blade. One misstep, and a whole lot of people—civilians—could get hurt. If they wanted to take down their target without tipping off any hostiles, they’d have to execute the plan to perfection. 

“Well,” said Danny, “now we wait.”

Steve nodded. “Now we wait,” he agreed.

  



	2. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two**

Five minutes passed. Then ten, twenty, thirty. It was almost 9PM by the time Danny decided he was done waiting. “I’m gonna go,” he informed Steve, thumping one hand on the table for emphasis. “This is useless. I’m tired, I’m full, the dining room is shutting down, and our guy is clearly not planning on showing up tonight.”

Steve’s expression was part confused, part surprised as he watched Danny rise to his feet and push back his chair. “Hold on, sit down.” He made a sweeping downward motion with his hand. “Just give it another minute.”

Danny paused, but didn’t retake his seat. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest, tilting his head back and looking down at Steve (a strangely satisfying feeling, given that it was usually the other way around). “What?” he implored, spreading his hands and making a big show of looking around the entire room. “I don’t see anything, Steve. Nothing except, uh, except a whole lot of waiters clearing tables and showing people the door.” He pointed out their waiter; the man stood awkwardly nearby, shifting his weight from side to side and glancing repeatedly at the clock hanging from the an ornate central pillar. “Look at this poor shmuck. He’s gonna sweat out that expensive suit if we stick around any longer.”

Steve inhaled deeply. He braced one elbow on the pristine white table cloth, pinching his nose between his thumb and forefinger. A throbbing vein became visible in his neck. “Maybe someone tipped our guy off.”

Danny moved around the table. He brushed his hand over Steve’s shoulder as he passed, heading for the glass archway they’d entered through. “C’mon. Even if he knows we’re here, we can still corner him before we get to our first port of call.”

Steve pushed back his chair, following Danny. Their waiter tagged along behind, his expression and slumped posture making it obvious how relieved he was by their decision to (finally) leave. Looking around, Danny realized they’d been the last people still seated. Great. Totally not suspicious at all.

“Port of call, huh?” Steve smiled as they passed through the glass archway and exited the dining room.

“Don’t be too impressed.” Danny jerked his head once and smiled in acknowledgment of the check-in man’s muttered, “ _Have a good night, gentlemen._ ” They made their way back toward the elevator. “I read it in one of those pamphlets in our room. It, uh, explained all these boater terms so passengers can actually understand what the hell the captain’s saying in his intercom speeches.”

Steve chuckled. “Is that right?”

“That’s right.” The elevator opened and Danny stepped inside. He stood back, giving Steve some space. “So, what’s the plan? What now?”

Steve had just opened his mouth to reply when someone wearing a formal tuxedo threw their arm between the closing elevator doors, forcing them to reopen. An elegant woman in a long red gown swept inside. She was followed by a man with wavy blond hair and turquoise eyes. He was wearing an expensive suit and black tie. 

Danny risked a glance at Steve. His own surprise was reflected in his partner’s eyes. Steve gave the slightest up-down jerk of his head, confirming what Danny had already guessed: this wasn’t just another rich tourist and his hot date.

“It’s floor three, dear.” Richard Marks, the infamous drug dealer and the target of Steve and Danny’s covert op, nodded at the woman in red. She pursed her lips, pressing the button labeled ‘3’ with a long, gloved finger. “Thank you, darling,” said Marks courteously. 

Richard Marks turned his intense blue gaze on Steve, then on Danny. His gaze slid between them like a snake through sand. He smiled a taut, tense smile. “Good evening, gentlemen.” His tone was as stiff and formal as his posture. “Are you having a good first day aboard?”

“Uh, yeah, can’t complain.” Danny glanced at Steve again. He was a bit flustered (of course he was; he hadn’t expected their target to bust into the elevator and start making awkward small talk) but managed to pass it off by reaching down and looping his arm through Steve’s. “My husband and I are on our honeymoon.”

Steve shot him a quick, appraising glance. Danny prayed to whatever or whoever might be listening that his partner wouldn’t do or say anything stupid. The last thing they needed was a blown cover while trapped in an elevator with a highly dangerous (and probably heavily armed) internationally notorious cocaine dealer.

“Well, it’s certainly an easy way to get around.” Marks’ smile grew slightly mischievous. Like he knew something they didn’t—or thought he did, anyway. “Everything’s provided. Meals, beds, excellent service…” He glanced at the red-dressed woman by his side. “Ahh, I forgot to introduce myself properly. I’m James Renn. And this lovely lady is my fiancée, Kate MacRah.”

“How do you do?” said Kate MacRah graciously. She reached out and shook hands with Steve and Danny, smiling a painted, plastic smile. 

“And you are…?” prompted Marks, once formalities had been exchanged. 

“Oh, sorry, right.” Steve smiled his most disarming, open smile. “I’m Ross Lancaster, and this—” he bumped Danny with his elbow, “—is my husband, Russell.”

“Lancaster,” Danny added, unnecessarily. He cleared his throat, purposefully avoiding Steve’s disbelieving stare. “Russell Lancaster.”

“That’s implied.” Exasperation was clear in Steve’s voice. But there was something else in his tone, just beneath the surface. Amusement, maybe, and (Danny couldn’t believe he was thinking this, even in the safety of his own mind) just a touch of fondness. “We just told them we’re married; let them figure it out.”

Marks exchanged a quick glance with his fiancée—or business associate, if Danny was reading the situation right. Business associate with benefits. Yeah, that seemed about right.

“Maybe I didn’t take your name,” Danny said, trying and failing to recover the situation. 

“Yeah, and maybe they don’t care.” 

Danny couldn’t help himself. If Steve wanted to play it this way, well, he had no choice but to play along. “Well, _Ross,”_ he said, turning and jabbing Steve’s chest with one finger, “how about this? How about—” 

Thankfully, the elevator stopped at that moment, cutting off the argument before it could get any more heated. With a tense smile and a quick dip of his head, Richard Marks and Kate MacRah stepped out onto their hall. “Have a good night,” Marks said. Danny got one last look at the (clearly disgruntled) man and his lady as they strode away down the hall.

The doors slid shut with a dull _clunk_. He lost visual.

. . . . . .

After that, it was much easier to keep tabs on Richard Marks. Once they knew roughly where his suite was located (exactly a floor above their own, conveniently enough), all they needed to do was install cameras and bugs and figure out when and where Marks (and his illegal cargo) planned on disembarking. 

The first part would be easy (at least Danny hoped so), but the second step would be harder. Worst case, they’d have to ask outright and risk blowing their already delicate cover. And then they’d be stranded in the middle of the Pacific with a desperate, brilliant drug dealer and a ship full of hostages. 

Not ideal, to say the least.

. . . . . .

They returned to their suite at eleven thirty that night. Steve had insisted on walking around the promenade deck a few times, and, reluctant to leave his partner alone, Danny accompanied him. They were doing recon, Steve insisted. Getting to know the terrain. But Danny knew better. Out in the fresh, clean ocean air, with the stars glowing overhead and the moonlight reflecting off crested waves, it was easier for Steve to feel good. 

Ever since being diagnosed with radiation poisoning a few weeks back, Steve’s already haphazard health had become a turbulent roller-coaster of ups and downs. Mostly downs, although he was good at hiding his discomfort most of the time. Not from Danny, of course, but from everyone else. And, as far as Danny could tell, fresh air, good company, and being close to the water were a few things that helped Steve the most. Danny wasn’t sure if he counted as good company, but he’d be damned if he left his sick partner alone on a ship full of potential drug dealers and hitmen. Besides, Steve’s condition could deteriorate any second, drug dealers or no. There was no way in heaven or hell Danny would risk leaving him alone.

As they stood out on a high balcony deck near the prow, the Big Dipper shining overhead, Steve cleared his throat loudly. Danny turned to look at him. Steve was leaning out over the water, his forearms braced on the four-foot-high railing. His gaze tracked the waves as they crashed against the ship’s enormous, curving bow. “Hey, Danny,” he said.

“Hey, Steven,” Danny mimicked. 

Steve sighed. He shook his head. His eyes remained fixed on the water. “I wanted to thank you for coming out here with me, but if you’re gonna be a dick…”

“No, no.” Danny moved forward, resting his arms on the railing beside Steve. He followed his partner’s gaze: Foam rode the crests like a thousand little surfers dressed in misty white. “You don’t have to thank me. It’s my job to have your back.”

Steve shrugged. The light from the crescent moon leapt off the waves and painted his face in silver shadow. In the darkness, his eyes reflected the endless depths of the ocean. “You have a lot more of me than that, Danny.”

It was a cryptic thing to say, and Danny wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He opted to stay silent. Biting his lip, he picked at the cold, chipped metal railing under his hands. Flecks of metallic silver paint came away under his nails. He brushed them off his hands. The little chips sailed away toward the dark roiling water five floors below.

Steve sighed. A deep, soul-weary sigh. Not a sound Danny was used to hearing from him. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I should’ve sat this one out.”

Danny frowned. That was the most un-Steve-like thing he’d ever heard his partner say. “What’s wrong? Is something wrong?” _Well no shit, Detective Obvious,_ he mentally berated himself. Of course something was wrong. Steve had radiation poisoning, for fuck’s sake. There was nothing right about that.

Steve shrugged. “I mean, yeah. Not gonna lie, I haven’t been feeling great these past few weeks.”

Danny forced a little smile, even as his heart twisted painfully in his chest. “No point in lying to me,” he agreed. He indicated himself with a broad sweep of his hand. “Human lie detector.”

Steve chuckled. “You forget I was trained to withstand torture and interrogation.”

“I don’t forget.” Danny re-crossed his arms, settling his weight against the railing. The ocean breeze twined brisk fingers through his hair, brushing gentle lips across his bare hands and face. “But give me a few weeks and a windowless room, and I could make you tell me anything.”

Steve finally looked up at this. There was something utterly unreadable in his eyes. “That’s big talk, Danno.” He cracked a smile. “How much do you wanna bet you could break me?”

“Oh, in a betting mood, are we?” Danny straightened up, meeting Steve’s gaze and returning his smile. “What would you be willing to bet, huh, Steven? Your eternally estranged wallet? How can I even be sure it exists?” He lifted one brow accusatorily. “I should really call Jerry up on that one. ‘The mysterious disappearance of Steve’s phantom credit card _.’_ Now there’s a conspiracy theory I could get behind.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I could bet the Camaro,” he said.

Danny stared at him in shocked disbelief. “My car? You want to bet _my car,_ the car that belongs to _me,_ against me? What’s the matter with you?”

Steve’s smile grew. He laughed, a bright, rumbling laugh. It sent a spike of conflicting emotions shooting through Danny’s chest: happiness, sadness, fear. Suddenly, he was struck by the force of his love for this reckless, frustrating, _incredible_ man. Since their meeting seven years before ( _seven years, two months, four days,_ the little voice in his head that sounded like Steve corrected him), Steve had become so ingrained in Danny’s life, such a part of what made him who he was, that he wasn’t sure what he’d be without him. But unless Steve’s irredeemable insanity got Danny killed first (no longer as likely as he’d once thought, the way things were going), he’d have to find a way to live in a post-Steve McGarrett world. He’d _have_ to. That thought killed him a little more every day.

Despite the heaviness in his heart, Danny laughed along with his partner, not even sure why he was laughing, and did his best not think about anything at all. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Steve said after a few moments of extended but comfortable silence. “We still have to figure out how to keep you from annoying me all night.”

“Excuse me.” Danny put on his best affronted expression. “Mr. _I-Cuddle-Like-An-Angry-Squid_ , I fear to think what we’ll have to do to keep _you_ from annoying _me._ ”

Grinning, Steve pushed himself away from the railing. He turned to Danny, fixing him with a playfully searching stare. “Did Catherine tell you about that?”

“No need; I guessed.” Danny shot Steve a self-satisfied smirk. “I can read you like a book, babe.”

“That would be a fantastic burn, Danno, if I’d ever seen you reading a book,” replied Steve, matching Danny smirk-for-smirk.

“Maybe you don’t pay enough attention to me, huh? Or maybe I don’t spend my leisure time around you. Which is for the best, because you probably don’t even know what the word _‘leisure’_ means.”

“Is that right?”

“You tell me.”

“You want a casual definition, or the dictionary one?”

“Don’t bother. I’ll let you have a free pass on this one. Just because I’m scared of what your definition of ‘leisure’ would entail. You might ruin the word forever.”

“ _Entail?’”_

“Yes, ‘ _entail._ ’ That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, well, I was hoping I’d heard wrong.”

Keeping their voices low to avoid waking anyone else up, the two men walked side-by-side back down the promenade deck. They headed for the stairs leading back to their fourth-floor suite. Just before they re-entered the ship and left behind the ocean breeze and the swelling waves, a shooting star sliced open the sky directly over their heads.

Danny stopped mid-rant, staring up at the meteorite’s glowing trail. He blinked once, and it was gone. 

“Those are supposed to be lucky,” Steve said. Danny looked at him. He couldn’t tell if his partner was being serious or not.

“Good or bad luck?” Danny asked.

Steve shrugged. He smiled, warm and open and hopeful—all the things Danny couldn’t bring himself to be. “I dunno.” Steve looked away, up at where the streak of fire had passed like a celestial ghost across the inky sky. “Guess we’ll find out.”


	3. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three**

Steve awoke in the middle of the night with a pounding headache and a mouth full of blood. He sat straight up, reaching for his gun in the dark. His weapon wasn’t where he’d left it. Panic seized him by the throat. He choked, swinging his legs out over the side of the bed. He brought shaking hands up to his face. His chin, lips, throat were caked in half-dried blood. His heart slammed against his ribs so hard he thought his chest would split open. He inhaled deeply, gasping, fighting to fill lungs that refused to open. His head spun. He was dying, maybe, the serious effects of the radiation exposure hitting him earlier and harder than expected. He let his hands fall to his sides. His fingers tangled in the sheets, gripping so tight his entire torso shook from the strain. He closed his eyes, bent his head toward his knees, and tried to block out the unhelpful mantra of internalized panic racing through his mind.

After a few seconds (seconds that passed like hours, slow and sluggish as the blood still dripping from his nose) Steve collected himself enough to gain his feet. He stumbled, blinking as he adjusted to the dim light of the ocean-view suite. He made for the bathroom.

When he flicked on the bathroom light and saw himself in the mirror, Steve’s heart sank like a ship with a torpedoed hull. His face was devoid of color, save for trails of crimson slashing across his cheeks, throat, lips. If he held his breath and stood perfectly still, he could pass for a fresh corpse. 

Bracing himself with both hands palms-down on the counter, he ducked his head and spat into the sink. Red. Red and white, blood on his cheeks but not in his veins. Ice in his body, ice in his blood. 

Suddenly freezing, wracked with shivers that seized his muscles and clenched his stomach, Steve lurched across the bathroom to the shower. With shaking fingers, he twisted the heat dial all the way into the red. Water exploded from the showerhead in a torrent of blissfully hot drops. Closing his eyes against the spray, Steve stepped over the lip of the bath and stood, still in his shirt and boxers, in the scorching heat.

“Steve?” Danny’s hazy, half-asleep voice sounded from the bedroom. 

Steve’s heart began to pound again. He’d been sure Danny was asleep. He’d hoped to avoid talking about this again until after the cruise. They were on a mission. An important, dangerous mission. There was no margin for error. If Danny realized how bad it was, how unprepared Steve felt whenever he thought about taking on something of this magnitude at this moment… well, he couldn’t do anything about it. That was the problem. And Danny would worry and worry and worry, as he always did, and they’d both be miserable.

“Steve, are you taking a fucking shower at three in the morning?” 

Steve could tell by the increase in volume that Danny had left the bed. Or, well, the couch, anyway. They hadn’t been able to make the sleeping arrangement work at first, but after a few minutes of gesturing and whisper-yelling, Danny had (rather impolitely) insisted that Steve take the actual mattress. They both knew why. Steve had shown his gratefulness by not arguing further. In fact, they’d managed to settle down to sleep without much hassle—a fact that had made Steve very suspicious at the time.

And now it looked like he’d been right: no easy situation ever stayed easy.

Danny knocked on the door; Steve was eternally thankful he’d at least had the presence of mind to close it behind him. “Steve, I swear to God.” Danny slammed one hand abrasively against the door. “If you don’t answer me in three seconds, I’m gonna break this door down, sans pants, and storm that miserable undersized bathroom with a coat hanger, an unplugged iron, and whatever the hell else I can find in this storage cabinet.”

Steve almost laughed aloud at that vivid mental image. Almost. But then a wave of nausea hit, hard, and he braced himself with one hand against the tiled bathroom wall. Lowering his head, he leaned into the ultra-hot water. It poured down his neck and back, burning his skin. In a way, the pain was satisfying. At least it beat the dull, all-encompassing ache filling his muscles like acid injected under his skin. 

“All right, that’s it. I gave you fair warning. You’re paying for the damages and apologizing in person to every single one of our room service people for this, you hear me, Steven?”

With a reluctant groan of resignation, Steve said, “Danny, the door’s unlocked. Don’t do anything stupid. Just, uh—” he was cut off by another wave of sickness so vicious he bent over, pressing his forehead against the relatively cool wall. He swallowed hard, fighting the bile rising in his throat. “—Just go back to bed. Really, I’m fine.”

“Did you really just say the _‘f’_ word?” Danny sounded outraged. “Listen to me, Steven. You’re about as fine,” his tone was a mix of stubbornness and spite, “as I am happily married. My threat still stands: tell me what’s going on in there, or I’ll murder this door and find out for myself.”

“You’re very dramatic, you know that?” Steve forced himself to rise to his full height. With stiff, shaky fingers, he turned off the water. Immediately, he missed the fierce sting against his skin. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the curtains back and stepped out onto the bathmat. 

The room was filled with steam. The mirror was foggy with it, the towels slightly damp when he grabbed one off the rack. Working as quickly as his shaky, fatigued muscles would allow, he stripped off his sodden t-shirt, casting it aside. Rubbing the moisture out of his hair (for the most part) he draped the towel on a hangar. Next, he cleared a little circle in the steamed-up mirror: After all, it wouldn’t do if there were still traces blood on his face. Danny was observant, even when half-asleep. Steve had learned that lesson years ago.

“You coming out anytime soon, or should I drag my pillow into this hall and sleep by the door?” Danny sounded like he was trying to use irritation to mask his concern. It wasn’t working; not by a long shot. Steve saw through it in a millisecond. 

“Danny. I’m fine.” He forced as much conviction into his words as possible. Unfortunately, he was one-hundred percent sure Danny could see through his bullshit just as easily as he saw through Danny’s.

“There’s blood on your pillow, Steve.” Yep, he definitely wasn’t getting away with this. Stupid brilliant detective and his stupid brilliant observational skills. “You wanna tell me how that happened? Huh? Cuz normally I’d just assume you shot someone, but since I don’t see any convenient corpses lying around, I’m forced to conclude that the shockingly large red stain on the bed belongs to you.”

“It was just a bloody nose, okay? Let it go.”

“Just a bloody nose, just a broken arm, just a mild case of _radiation poisoning_...” Danny was entering full-on-rant-mode. In Steve’s not-so-limited experience, it was better to just sit back and let his partner get it all out. Strangely, however, Danny’s tirade faded off after that. Which was, in Steve’s opinion, a lot more disconcerting than the fury-fueled, creatively elaborate verbal explosion he’d been expecting. If Danny had deemed the situation too serious, too unstoppable to even argue about it anymore, well. That wasn’t a good sign.

Steve pulled the towel down and wrapped it tight around his waist. He opened the door, slowly, in case Danny was standing behind it. A billow of steam came out with him. It surrounded swirled around him like an ethereal cloak. “Hey,” he said, trying and failing to keep his voice from cracking.

In the washed-out glow of the bathroom’s overhead light, Danny’s face was almost as pale as Steve’s. His shadowed eyes flicked up to meet Steve’s. There was anger there, concern folded into fear. “You look like shit.” Danny sounded like he was trying to keep his voice steady, too. “Just a bloody nose, huh? You think I’m gonna buy that? What’s the hell’s the matter with you?”

Steve smiled through the pain. Danny’s anger he could handle. That was familiar, common. Comfortingly normal. He wasn’t sure he could handle pity or softness. Not when he already felt like breaking. 

Danny stood back. Giving Steve space to leave the bathroom, if he wanted. Gratefully, Steve walked past his partner, flicking off the light as he went. The air was thick with steam. He inhaled deeply, trying not to think about how his lungs had stuck together earlier, how drawing breath had become impossible. Everything was okay now. The spell had passed. He was okay.

How long until the next time, he had no idea. But for now, he felt relatively not horrible. And that was something. 

Steve made his way back to the bed. He settled on the edge, sinking into the mattress with a sigh. His muscles still ached, and his head throbbed viciously. But the nausea had gone, and he’d finally stopped shaking. 

To his surprise, Danny didn’t go back to the couch. He followed Steve, stopping just short of the bed. Leaning against the wall, Danny crossing his arms over his chest and fixed him with an intense, direct stare. Steve looked up, trying to read Danny’s thoughts from his partner’s expression and posture. He found himself distracted by the way Danny’s hair stuck up in places, by the faint moonlight filtering through the sheer curtains sliding over the chiseled planes of Danny’s face, chest, neck. 

“Danny.” Steve fixed his face in what he hoped was a neutral, relaxed expression. “Go back to bed. I told you, I’m okay now.”

“Oh, you’re okay now? Is that right? You want to say that again with a bit more conviction?” Danny still sounded upset, but it was a different kind of anger. This wasn’t the righteous fury that had fueled the vast majority of petty arguments Steve had endured for the past seven years. This was something new. Something real, raw, and soul-deep. Of course Danny was angry. But he was also terrified. 

Steve swallowed, mentally wincing at the roughness in his throat. “Danny, I swear to you, it’s just the meds I’m taking. They have side effects; the doctor told me there’d be some bad days. But, y’know, they’re helping, in the long run. You don’t have to worry, buddy; I’m handling this.”

Danny looked like he wanted to argue some more. But instead, he shook his head, running his fingers through untidy golden hair. “Gimme that pillow.” He jerked his chin at the bloodstained pillow next to Steve. “The one you bled all over.”

Deciding there was no point in wasting more time or energy on asking why, Steve grabbed the pillow and lobbed it at his partner. Danny caught it, then immediately tossed it into the far corner of the room. Without a word of explanation, Danny strode back across the room to the couch, picked up his own pillow, and tossed it over his shoulder. It hit Steve neatly in the chest; Steve let out a surprised _“unf!”_ on impact. 

“Danny, what’re you…?” Steve asked, as Danny knelt to unzip a suitcase (Steve’s suitcase, not his own) and began rummaging through it. 

“Here.” Danny straightened up. He had one of Steve’s navy-blue t-shirts wadded in his fist. He tossed it across the room. It landed neatly in Steve’s lap, right on top of Danny’s pillow. 

Steve picked up the shirt. He held it in both hands, rubbing his thumbs over the soft, well-worn fabric. He looked up as Danny re-zipped his suitcase, shoving it into the storage cabinet next to the couch. 

Danny noticed him looking. Immediately, he straightened up, slamming the cabinet door. Spreading his hands as if about to give a lecture, Danny pointed first at Steve, then at the wadded-up shirt. “What, are those pills messing with your head? It’s a shirt, you put it on.”

Steve didn’t say anything. He pulled the shirt down over his head, threading his arms through the holes. The fabric, soft and familiar, stuck to his still-damp skin. Pushing himself back onto the bed, Steve set Danny’s pillow aside, reaching for the other (unbloodied) one. He tucked it under his head, letting out a sigh of relief.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on.” Danny re-crossed the room. “Leave me some room, would you? Move over.”

Steve stared at him for a long moment, uncomprehending. And then the subtext of Danny’s words sank in, and his face split into a wide, disbelieving grin. “You’re getting in bed with me?”

“When you put it like that, it’s not so appealing. But yes. So shove over.” Danny settled on the far side of the bed. “And hand me my pillow, would you?”

Still hesitant to believe that this was actually happening—that he wasn’t just having a weird fever dream or something—Steve tossed Danny’s pillow across the bed.

“I said _hand_ , not _throw._ ” Danny caught the pillow against his chest and slammed it down on the mattress, just short of the backboard. With a huff, he rolled onto the mattress. Tucking his head into the overly-stuffed pillow, he turned his back on Steve. 

Steve moved to the other side of the bed. He wanted to say something, anything. Maybe tell Danny it was okay, he was a big boy and didn’t need a babysitter to watch over him. Or that he could take the couch if Danny wanted the bed so much. But he didn’t. He just lay there, muscles still pulsing with aftershocks of pain, and stared at the thin beam of moonlight cutting the ceiling in half.

“If you kick me in the middle of a good dream, I will end you,” Danny mumbled. He already sounded half asleep.

Steve smiled. He glanced over at his partner. All that was visible was the half-blonde, half-brunette back of Danny’s head, nestled into a pillow. “Hey, there’s a perfectly good couch over there if I’m annoying you,” he replied.

Danny snorted. “If you stop talking, you won’t be annoying me, and there won’t be a problem.”

“Whatever, Danny.”

“Goodnight, Steven.”

Steve rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “’Night,” he said. Turning over, he closed his eyes. Almost immediately, he slipped into a restless, dreamless sleep.


	4. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

They spent the next day setting up surveillance in Richard Marks’ room. He and his supposed fiancée, Kate MacRah, were staying in the suite just over Steve and Danny’s. However, according to intel dug up by Lou, Chin, and Jerry back at HQ, the infamous drug lord had also booked out the fanciest, most expensive rooms on the ship: the Neptune Suite, a massive and lavishly furnished space that was as close to an at-sea mansion as one could get.

“Let me get this straight: you’re saying we need audio and visual feeds from _both_ suites,” Danny said, as he and Steve finished a late breakfast and headed out of the dining room. He had a Skype feed from Chin up on his phone; he held it up before his face to maintain eye contact as he spoke. “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

Chin shrugged. _“I’m sure Steve will find a way,”_ he said, with a wry smile. _“He always does.”_

“Oh, that’s good, very funny.” Danny shot Steve a quick glance. Sure enough, his partner was smirking in an obnoxiously self-satisfied way. “Stop inflating his ego; it’s already taking up all the room where his brain should be.”

Chin laughed. Then his expression became more serious. Or Danny thought it did—the signal was so bad on the _MS Andromeda_ that the image on his screen was a shifting, multi-colored blur. _“Unless we can catch Marks with the drugs on him, or get him to implicate himself in the crime, we have nothing. We need those recordings, guys.”_

“He’s right, Danny,” Steve said. They reached the now-familiar elevator that would take them back to the lower decks. Steve jabbed the ‘ _down_ ’ button, and stood back. “If we don’t get something solid on this guy soon, we’ll blow the operation. As soon as he leaves the ship, our chances of catching him within a hundred miles ofthe cargo are slim to none.”

Danny knew they were both right, as much as he hated to admit it. Which he never would, except in the safety of his own mind. “What’re we gonna say if we get caught bugging the Neptune Suite, huh? _‘Oh, sorry, we thought this was_ our _fancy rich-person luxury condo. We’ll just be going now. Please don’t shoot us and dump our bodies in the ocean where no one will ever find us!’_ ”

“We’ll have guns, too, Danny,” Steve reminded him. “We’ve done stuff like this a hundred times before. I can’t believe you’re getting worked up over nothing.”

“Nothing? _Nothing?_ ” Before Danny could collect himself enough to elaborate, Chin cut him off. 

“ _Guys, I’m not sure how much longer this connection will last. Jerry says you’re heading into a dark zone; he’s not sure when we’ll be to make contact again once the signal goes out._ ”

Steve leaned over, moving in front of Danny’s phone’s camera. “All right, Chin. Thanks for the intel. We’ll check in with Jerry ASAP. In the meantime, I want you and Grover to get some DEA guys down to the Seattle cruise terminal. That’s the first stop on our itinerary; we’ll want to watch for suspicious activity well in advance.”

Chin nodded. “ _We’re on it. Anything else I should know before we lose the signal?_ ”

“Yeah,” Danny said, before Steve could answer. “If you get the chance, tell my kids I love them. In case Steve decides to go out in a blaze of glory and I happen to be nearby.”

Chin laughed, shaking his head. Danny didn’t think there was anything funny about what he’d said, but he let it go.

“ _Will do. I’ll make sure Jerry’s here at the Palace in case you make contact in the next twenty-four hours._ ” As the signal grew weaker, Chin’s image faded to black. The audio became clipped and fuzzy. “ _Good luck, you two._ ”

“Thanks, brother,” Steve said. A second later, the feed cut off. An error message popped up on the screen: _Warning: bandwidth extremely low!_

“You don’t say,” Danny muttered. He swiped away the message with his thumb. 

At that moment, the elevator opened, and a group of people, happily chatting away, crowded the hall. Avoiding banging into anyone shorter than he was, Danny slid through the dispersing crowd and onto the elevator. Steve followed close behind.

. . . . . .

Bugging Richard Marks’ non-Neptune suite turned out to be a lot easier than Danny had anticipated. Once they’d ascertained that the drug lord was not in his room (and neither were his fiancée or any of the ship’s cleaning crew), all it took was a little bit of smooth talk, a fake ID, an ever faker medical condition, and an excessive number of apologies and thank-yous to convince a passing staff member to give them access to the suite.

“I can’t believe you lost your keycard,” Steve said, shaking his head in disbelief as he held the door for Danny. “Do you know how much those things cost to replace?”

Danny glared at him. “Oh, really, you’re gonna bitch about that right now? At least I’m not the one who left his keycard locked in the room, Mr. High-and-Mighty, so don’t give me any shit. Just help me find my meds before I go into shock, would you?”

The door slammed behind them. Just before it did, Danny threw one last grateful look over his shoulder at the disgruntled (but still smiling) man who had let them in.

“Well, that went well.” Steve grinned at Danny in the dim half-light of the room. He plunged one hand into his pocket, extracting a fist-full of listening devices, cameras, and wires. He handed half the gear to Danny. Together, they moved around the room, canvassing and assessing. It was crucial to place the bugs carefully. Not where they’d be obvious, but where they were most likely to catch on tape the conversations and actions needed to make a solid case against Richard Marks and his insidious operation.

Steve and Danny were in and out in minutes. Briefly, they paused outside the room to establish that the feeds between their headsets and the bugs were up and running. Once they’d done that, they headed back down the hall toward the elevator.

“Hold on. Let me find a map and figure out where the hell we’re going.” Danny pulled out his phone as they stood in the elevator. 

Steve leaned against the railing, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows. “There’s no signal, Danny. But thankfully for us, there _is_ a blueprint map of the ship plastered to the wall right behind you.”

Danny gave his partner a contemptuous look. He shoved his phone back in his pocket, turning to follow Steve’s gaze. Sure enough, a three-by-two-foot map of the entire ship’s floor plans was sprawled behind him. How the fuck he’d failed to miss that, he had no idea. Then again, it had been a stressful day and a half. He had plenty of things to think about ( _worry about,_ his brain corrected him) that didn’t involve knowing the location of every detail of the ship.

But still. He should’ve seen it. If they were going to pull this off, he’d have to stay focused on the case. No more letting his mind wander.

Steve pointed out a particularly large guest room on the map. It was located on the deck above the one they’d just come from, closer to the bow than Marks’ smaller room. “That’s gotta be it.”

Danny looked at the tiny number beside the outline of the enormous room, tracing it down to the map’s legend. “ _Suite 7_ ,” he read aloud, “ _Neptune Suite._ Yeah, that’s it.”

Steve crossed his arms. He gave a short, slightly stiff nod. “All right. We head back to our room, pick up the rest of our hardware, and get in and out fast. After that, it’s a waiting game.” 

The elevator stopped on their floor. Danny stepped out into the hall, half-turning to face Steve as they walked back to their room. “Get in and out fast, that’s your plan? What, are you crazy? Relying on the fragile hope that this Richard Marks guy doesn’t have personal bodyguards and security by the dozens hanging around that suite? Or that he isn’t in there right now with his girlfriend-slash-business partner, celebrating the frankly obscene amount of cash they’re going to make if—or _when_ —we fuck this up?” 

Steve pulled out his keycard and unlocked the door to their ocean-view room. He stepped inside, holding the door for Danny. “You coming?”

Danny threw up his hands. “It’s like talking to a brick wall!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Steve closed the door behind them. It locked with a satisfying _clunk-click._ “Get your gun. We need to head out now; lunch starts in five minutes. That gives us an optimal time window of about twenty minutes to get in, tape the place up, and get out.”

“I take back the brick wall thing.” Danny opened the safe nestled at the back of the storage closet. He sifted through his stash of weapons, looking for the right fit for this mission. He settled on a Glock 43: accurate, reliable, and easy to conceal. “Talking to you is like talking to a militarized robot with a gun fetish and a chronic adrenaline addiction.”

Steve was busy hiding guns (not one, four) of varying sizes and shapes in increasingly unlikely places on his body. “So now I’m a robot with an adrenaline addiction? That doesn’t make any sense, Danny.”

Danny pulled his shirt down over his gun. He fished a loose-fitting jacket out of his suitcase, hoping it would conceal the faint outline of the weapon against his hip. “If anyone could pull it off, it’d be you, babe.” Well, fuck. That’d come out a lot less insulting than he’d originally intended.

Steve shook his head. Even in the faint light of the hall between the bedroom and the bathroom, Danny could tell he was smiling. Steve finished strapping a set of sheathed throwing knives to his calf, pulling his pant leg down to conceal it. He straightened up, turning to face Danny. “All right, partner. You ready for this?”

“No,” said Danny flatly. “But I have to go anyway, so why bother arguing?”

Steve twisted the handle of the door, swinging it inward. “Exactly,” he said. “Let’s move.”


	5. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

Steve glanced at his watch. According to his rough estimate, they had twenty-two minutes before their optimal infiltration window closed, after which time Richard Marks and Kate MacRah could return to the Neptune Suite at any moment. Steve and Danny were moving as fast as humanly possible (well, maybe not, what with Steve still drained from last night and Danny being Danny), but Steve was concerned (not worried, _concerned_ ) that it wouldn’t be enough. If they wanted to do this right, they needed eyes and ears in every single room in that enormous suite. Setting up proper surveillance—the only kind of surveillance worth setting up, in this case—could take a while. 

Danny seemed to be thinking along the same lines. As he followed Steve up yet another narrow flight of stairs, he asked, “You really think we can get in and out in twenty minutes? I mean, you do realize bugging a floating condo-mansion is going to take some time, right?”

“Some time, yeah.” Steve reached the stairwell entrance to the lower promenade deck. He shouldered open the door, holding it for his partner. “We have plenty of time.” He checked his watch again. Okay, so maybe ‘plenty’ was an exaggeration. Aloud, he said, “Twenty minutes, if we hurry.”

“Hurry where?” Danny stopped outside the door, gesturing up and down the lower promenade. The balcony deck wrapped around the outer middle of the ship like a mini metal skirt, narrow and constantly whipped by the wind. “I’m not the ship-expert here, babe, but I’m pretty fucking sure this is _not_ the deck we want. Unless you wanna walk around and let off some steam before we march up to a bunch of dangerous armed guards and demand entry to their even more dangerous boss’s luxury suite?”

Steve fought the overwhelming urge to roll his eyes. “I’ve got a plan. Just shut up and follow my lead, all right?”

“No, not all right!” Despite his complaints, Danny was right on Steve’s heels as he strode down the promenade deck toward the ship’s bow. Surprisingly, there seemed to be very few guests out on the prow. Probably all at lunch, Steve thought. It was a strike of much-needed good luck. 

“Danny, I’m serious. You gotta trust me, man; I know what I’m doing.”

“That’s it,” Danny said. His voice was faint and strangely devoid of emotion.

Steve stopped once he reached the furthest forward position he could achieve while staying on the legal side of the railings. “That’s what?” he asked.

“That’s exactly the last thing on the planet Earth I wanted to hear you say right now.”

“What, _‘trust me?’_ Your partner, asking you to trust him on a mission? The horror.” Steve dropped into a crouch beside the ship’s front-facing outdoor hot tub. Bracing his elbows on his bent knees, he probed the edge of the utility hatch leading under the tub. If he could just get his finger through the gap…

“No, not that. ‘ _I know what I’m doing_.’ You know who says that, Steve?”

“Let me guess.” Steve managed to get the tips of three fingers under the rim of the locked hatch. He pulled back hard, and the plastic latches holding it in place broke. With a sharp snapping sound, the cover came away in his hands. “People who _don’t_ know what they’re doing.”

Danny spread his hands and leaned back against the ship’s rail, his expression one of mock surprise. “That’s right; gold star for you! I’m very proud.” He put one hand on his hip, right over where his gun was hidden, and gripped the rail with the other. “Now please, _please_ , I am literally begging you: whatever stupid thing you’re thinking of doing right now, stop. For both our sakes, and for the sakes of everyone aboard this vessel, stop. Nothing is going to get done about Richard Marks if we’re both stuck in some miserable utility hatch slowly starving to death for the remainder of our voyage.”

Steve straightened up. He rubbed his palms on his pants, then against each other. “Starving to death? Danny, you realize you’d die of dehydration long before starvation.”

“I hate you,” Danny said. “I hate you so much. Why can’t you just comfort me like a normal person, huh? Why can’t you say, ‘ _We won’t die, Danny; everything will be fine!_ ’”

Steve moved back toward the hatch. With a quick glance at the two other people on the prow (an elderly couple watching the water with their backs turned; not likely to be a problem), he stepped down onto the first rung of the utility ladder. The dark, narrow passage yawned like a snake’s maw. He took another step. “Are you kidding me right now?” he said, moving another step farther down. “Danny, whenever I tell you everything will be all right, you throw it back in my face. Like just now, I ask you to trust me, and what did you do? Huh? What did you say?”

Danny huffed. It was clear from his silence that he saw Steve’s point.

“Now if you’re done complaining, I’d like to finish this mission before our target gets back. Is that all right with you?”

With obvious reluctance, Danny approached the utility hatch. As he got closer, Steve saw apprehension growing in his partner’s eyes. Danny stopped a few feet short of the hatch, staring down at Steve with an unreadable expression. “You, uh, you know I can’t go in there, right?”

Steve was puzzled for a moment. And then it dawned on him: of course, Danny was claustrophobic. How that had managed to slip his mind, he had no clue. “Look, buddy, I’m sorry, but there’s no other way.” He thought for a moment, wracking his brain for alternatives. He found none. “We’re already short on time; we’ll need both of us down there bugging that suite if we want this done right.”

Danny crouched beside the hatch. The way he looked at it, Steve would’ve guessed it was a portal straight to hell. “I can’t,” Danny said. His tone was flat, leaving no room for argument. “I’m not… I won’t… I refuse.”

Steve clenched his jaw. If his partner really, really couldn’t do this, he had no other choice. “Fine; sit this one out. I’ll go in alone, cover as much territory as I can. If I’m not back at our room in thirty minutes, assume I was compromised.” He took another step down. His head was now about a foot below the deck; the hot, muggy darkness surrounded him like a stifling cloak.

Danny ran his fingers through his hair. His expression was torn—a mixture of panic and disbelief. “Steve, no! No, you can’t do that. We can wait. Figure out a better plan.”

“This _is_ the better plan.” Steve lowered himself down another step. “We can’t risk passing up any opportunity to catch this guy red-handed. The longer we wait, the better our chances of missing something vital.”

With a sudden _splash!_ , Steve’s booted foot struck water. He hesitated, glancing over his shoulder in an attempt to visually assess the water’s depth. It was no good—the faint light filtering through the chute wasn’t enough. “Danny,” he called up through the hatch. “I need you to shine a light down here.”

“What? Why?” Danny’s voice was tense and frayed. 

“We’ve got a problem. I think the maintenance team drains the tub before coming down here.”

Danny’s face appeared over the hatch. With the light of midday behind him, his hair shone like a golden crown. “What, and you think I just conveniently decided to bring a flashlight? Huh? I thought we would be sweet-talking security, not crawling through sewers like rats!”

“It’s not a sewer, Danny. Look around. Is there anything up there we could use to assess how deep the water is?”

Danny disappeared. A few seconds later, he returned with a long, thin plastic pole with a net on the end. “Here.” He lowered it down. Steve took hold of one end, carefully pulling it down into the maintenance chute. “Stick it down until it hits bottom.”

Holding onto the ladder with one hand and grasping the netted stick in the other, Steve probed the depths of the hot, churning water below. To his relief, it was only two-and-a-half feet deep. Easily navigable, especially for someone with his training. “It’s not deep,” he called back to Danny. “Between two and three feet. I should be able to swim through the drainage chute and get to Marks’ room from there.”

“How in the hell,” Danny called back, “are you gonna do that? What drainage chute? How do you know it’ll get you where you want to go, and not dump you out in the ocean with the rest of the bilge water?”

“This isn’t bilge water, Danny. It’s chlorinated; there’re regulations against dumping treated water in the ocean.” He hesitated, taking another step down. His leg sank into the water up to his knee. “I checked out the ship’s drainage system layout before we left the room; the Neptune Suite has its own jacuzzi. The drainage pipes have to meet up somewhere.”

“Oh, they have to? Says who, they have to?” 

“Just replace the hatch and get back to the room. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

There was a long, heavy moment of silence. Steve looked up, but with the light behind Danny, he couldn’t make out his partner’s expression. “Fine, you win. You win, all right?”

Steve frowned. “What’re you talking about?”

“You win; I’m coming down. God help me, I’m coming down.”

Steve couldn’t help himself: his heart lifted with relief, and he smiled broadly. “That’s great, pal,” he said. “Watch your step. A couple of those rungs are unstable.”

“Oh, good, because I’m used to dealing with unstable.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Make sure to put the cover back on. We can’t have anyone following us.”

“God forbid anyone come rescue us when we get wedged in some awful narrow hole and start suffocating.” Danny’s voice echoed eerily in the heavy, dank dimness. But despite his complaints, he did as Steve instructed. The maintenance chute was plunged into total darkness.

Steve took a deep breath. He lowered himself down the last few steps into the water. It swirled around his legs, rising to just above his knees. The smell of chlorine was thick and oppressive. Reaching into his pocket, he fished around until he found the infrared night-vision camera that had come with his surveillance kit. Flicking it on, he scanned the tight, narrow space. The screen showed a wall directly ahead, with a narrow chute (half filled with water) at its base. He turned the camera around, scanning all angles, but couldn’t find any other entrances or exits. “Danny,” he called up to his partner, who, by the sound of things, still hadn’t made it halfway down the ladder. “Looks like there’s only one way in or out. You’re not gonna like it.”

“Of course I’m not gonna like it. This is, uh, this is the worst place I’ve ever been.” There was a sharp splash as Danny’s foot finally hit the water. He groaned loudly. “I hate everything about this whole operation, okay? So please, do me a favor and let’s just get it over with.”

“Hey, you can still go back to the room.” Steve waded through the water until his outstretched fingertips brushed the wall over the drainage chute.

“No, I can’t. You know I can’t.” Danny’s voice was ragged, his breathing fast and shallow. 

Steve’s heart clenched in his chest. He knew how hard this must be for Danny, and yet there his partner was, risking his life and sanity for Steve yet again. He wasn’t sure it was physically possible for anyone to feel more love for any other person than he did right then for Danny. “Thanks, Danny,” he said. “I really mean it; thank you.”

Danny muttered something unintelligible in response. It sounded kind of like “ _Don’t thank me yet_ ,” but Steve couldn’t be sure.

Crouching down, Steve used the night-vision camera to get one last look at the outgoing pipe, then tucked it into the plastic pouch he’d used to waterproof all the delicate equipment. Probing the cold, slimy wall with his fingers, he felt around the outline of the pipe. By his estimate, there were roughly five or six inches of air between the top of the pipe and the surface of the water. It would be tight, to say the least. But it was certainly doable. 

In the darkness, Danny reached out and grasped Steve’s shoulder. Even through the fabric of his shirt and denim jacket, Steve could feel Danny shaking. A sudden, crushing wave of guilt washed over him. Danny was terrified. He tried to tell himself that this was the only way, that the mission was worth his partner’s temporary discomfort, but the guilt only grew stronger the longer he thought about it. They were already running out of time to act, or he would have insisted that Danny go back. Hell, he would’ve backed out himself if it would save Danny the stress and pain. But right now, with vital seconds slipping by and the success of their entire operation on the line, there just wasn’t time to figure out another way.

Inhaling deeply to clear his mind, Steve pushed his feelings aside and concentrated on the task at hand.

“Danny.” Steve kept his voice as calm and level as possible. “We’re gonna have to get down and crawl into the pipe. After that, I want you to turn over on your back and keep your nose and lips as far above water as you can. It’s gonna be tight—there’re only about five inches of clear air over the water in the chute—so try not to panic.” He mentally cursed himself as soon as the words left his mouth; what the fuck was he saying? Of course Danny would _try_ not to panic. Having had a number of panic attacks himself, Steve knew exactly how hard—often impossible, in fact—calming down after an episode could be. Let alone in the middle of one. He understood, he really did. But in this case, panicking could mean inhaling chlorinated water and suffocating to death in a narrow, subdeck drainage pipe, and that just wasn’t an option. 

Moving forward, Steve sank down until he was submerged up to his neck. He breathed deep, inhaling then exhaling slowly, letting his lungs acclimatize to the ultra-humid, hot air rising from the water. Slowly, he pulled himself forward into the pipe. Thankfully, the chute was broad and tall enough to easily accommodate his build. Unless it got narrow further down—a possibility, but a slim one, he hoped—they should be fine.

“I’m going in now,” Steve told Danny, still in that calm, level tone. “Listen to me, Danny, if you can’t do this, you need to let me know now. I’m not gonna tell you what to do, one way or the other. But I’m not gonna risk losing you down here, all right?”

In the darkness, there was a long, tense moment of silence. Danny’s ragged breathing mixed with the churning of the water, and the hollow sound of Steve’s breath in the narrow airspace of the tunnel. When Danny spoke, his voice was as rough as gravel-grade sandpaper. He sounded breathless and pained, as if someone had thrown him off a high terrace and knocked all the wind out of his body. “I’m not leaving you, Steven. When are you gonna get that through that thick skull of yours? I hate you for this, I really do. And I promise that, if we survive, I’ll kill you myself for dragging me down here. But I’m not leaving.”

Warmth that had nothing to do with temperature of the water exploded in Steve’s chest. Even in the oppressive, dank darkness of the drainage chute, Steve couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “All right, then,” he said. “If you’re really sure about this.”

“I’m really sure.” There was a distinctive splash, followed by a few choice curses. Danny had fully entered the water. “Which makes me almost as stupid as you are, but I’m sure.”

Steve laughed. “Come on, Danno,” he said. His voice echoed eerily in the narrow, wet space. “Let’s go catch a drug lord.”


	6. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

As Danny followed Steve into the drainage pipe, he was violently aware of the current tugging at his clothes. Like the water had come alive to fold chemical-scented arms around him, pulling him inexorably down, down until there was nothing but heat and darkness and water…

Danny stopped, bracing his hands against the sides of the passage. He gasped in hot lungfuls of air. The humidity was so thick it felt like he was already drowning. Tendrils of water traced his lips, wet hands slapping his face and wrapping around his throat. He closed his eyes. Stars danced in his vision, red and white like the colors on the flag. There was a ringing in his ears. It grew louder the deeper he went. 

He couldn’t see Steve. That was the worst part, not knowing. The passage was so dark it felt like the lightlessness was pressing his eyes into his skull. He imagined this was what being in a vacuum felt like, only louder. The water gushed and hissed as it slipped by. He was an insect with wet wings, helplessly carried downstream.

Up ahead, Danny heard Steve’s voice. Just a few garbled words obscured by the rushing torrent. There was a sharp edge to Steve’s tone, like he was giving a command. 

Danny tilted his head back. His lips brushed the metal lining of the chute. Fresh panic pierce him like a barbed spear and stuck, shivering, in his chest. “What?!” he yelled back. His voice splintered like frozen glass. His ears were full of water, distorting sound. “Steve, I can’t… I can’t hear you!” As he spoke, the water surged around him. He barely avoided inhaling a mouthful of chlorinated foam. His whole body was electric with fear, his heart beating so violently he thought it would break his ribs. 

Drowning in a tiny, airless space. All his childhood trauma and phobias rolled into one. Leave it to Steven Fucking McGarrett to get him into a situation like this.

A few seconds later, he found out why Steve had been yelling. 

The chute turned sharply downward. It wasn’t gradual, like the bend in a water slide, but sharp and steep like a waterfall. Gravity picked Danny up and threw him, literally kicking and screaming, over the edge. The tiny air-filled gap at the top of the chute disappeared, replaced by bubbles and foam. 

Danny fell, plunging through the hot, frothy drainage. Everything was blackness and heat. He held his breath (what little was left—he hadn’t had time to prepare for the plunge), closing his eyes against the intense sting of chemicals. His chest burned. His body slammed into one side of the chute and then the other, tossed and battered by the current. Reality shattered. The water was everywhere, on everything. It was all around him, in his mouth, in his eyes. His thoughts were waterlogged, saturated. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t scream. Couldn’t see, couldn’t hear. All he could do was feel.

Just as he was beginning to think it was all over, that he’d have to take a breath and drown, something brushed his hand. In the airless darkness, fingers reaching for his own. They connected, briefly brushing over his palm before sliding down to curl around his wrist. Through the dimness of his hazy thoughts, a single shining thought crashed through Danny like a tidal wave: _Steve!_ Steve was alive, Steve was there. Steve, more at home in the water than on land, with brine in his blood and captive oceans in his eyes.

Filled with new determination, Danny lashed out with his legs. His feet struck metal; he kicked off hard, pushing in the direction that felt like up. He flipped his hand—the one Steve was holding—and grasped his partner’s wrist tight. Like medieval knights carrying fallen comrades off the battlefield, Steve and Danny dragged each other through the rushing, tumbling torrent. 

They breached the surface together. The water broke around them, surging up before crashing back down in defeat.

Danny came up gasping. He threw his head back, eyes closed, and inhaled as deeply as he could. To his surprise, they no longer seemed to be in a narrow chute. The harsh, ragged sounds of his breath echoed loudly, bouncing off surfaces at least five feet from his head. When he kicked out, treading water, his feet struck metal. He found that he could stand—the water was less than four feet deep. He opened his eyes, blinking against the residual sting of chlorine. It was still pitch black, but at least there was plenty of room to breathe. Reaching out in the darkness, his numb hands found a wall. He slumped against the solid surface, panting and shaking. 

“We made it, pal.” In the darkness, Steve’s voice was a glowing beacon of light. “It’s over.”

Danny laughed. It wasn’t a sane sound, all jagged edges and sharp, high notes. Relief flooded him. It mixed with the adrenaline surging through his veins. He slid down the wall, fingers pressing hard against the smooth, hard metal. He swallowed, tried to speak, and ended up laughing again. With his back to the wall and more than half his body still surrounded by water, he ran trembling fingers through his wet, disheveled hair.

After a long moment, during which Danny managed to regain about ten percent of his sanity and his full power of speech, he said, “I swear to everything I love in this miserable world that I will kill you for this.” Unfortunately, his voice shook and the words were flooded with relief. The threat came out flat and venomless—a defanged snake. 

“You might wanna save killing me for after the mission,” Steve replied. He sounded breathless, but nowhere near as shaken as Danny felt. Which made sense; Steve had faced situations (many of them water-related) far more dangerous and terrifying than falling through a drainage pipe. “Unless you wanna put up all the surveillance gear yourself?”

Danny shook his head, even though he knew Steve couldn’t see him. He wanted to say something else, but his throat was too tight. He slid farther down the wall. The water lapped at his chest; he threw his head back against the metal surface, concentrating on breathing evenly. 

In the dark space, a faint light flickered to life. Danny blinked, trying to make out the source. It took him a few seconds to realize that Steve had dug out his phone and turned on the screen. 

“Are we there? Is this it?” Danny asked, after a few second of contemplative silence from his partner.

Steve turned off his phone. The room was plunged once more into total darkness. There was the crinkling of plastic; Danny assumed Steve was putting his phone back into a waterproof pouch. “Yeah. The Neptune Suite is right over us. Look around; there’s gotta be a ladder or something.”

Danny ran a sodden sleeve over his face. “I can’t _look_ at anything,” he reminded Steve, with some vehemence. 

Steve ignored him. “Hold on, think I’ve got something.” There was the sharp sound of rubber on metal. “Follow my voice, Danny. There’s a ladder across the room from the chute we came through. I’m going up now.”

Danny moved cautiously toward the sound of Steve’s boots stepping up metal rungs. Some part of him—the irrational, terrified part of his mind that refused to shut up—screamed at him not to leave the wall. _It’s not safe!_ His instincts cried out with every step he took. _What if there’s another drop-off, or a drain, or something much, much worse? If you leave the wall, you’ll never find your way back again! You’ll get lost in this dank, awful hole and die!_ Clenching his jaw, he forced the negative thoughts out of his head. Right now, the only thing that could get him in trouble would be panicking again.

He reached the ladder and began to climb. He reached what felt like the halfway point, and stopped. His muscles were sore, his entire body one big bruise. As the adrenaline left his system (not because he no longer needed it, but because he’d officially run out), the inevitable post-panic exhaustion washed over him like waves on a rocky shore. With a sharp hiss of pained frustration, he closed his eyes against the oppressive darkness. He held on tight to the ladder, breathing in shaky, shallow gasps. 

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t quite done freaking out.

“Danny!” Steve’s voice, strangely muted by distance, sliced through the rising tide of panic like a hot knife through butter. Danny jerked his head up. He opened his eyes. To his surprise and relief, he was immediately blinded by bright, unfiltered electric light: Steve had reached the top of the ladder and opened the maintenance hatch. His partner was crouched beside the hatch, looking down at him with obvious concern.

Danny climbed the second half of the ladder so fast he nearly slipped and fell back down the chute. When he reached the top, Steve grabbed him by the front of the shirt, pulling him out of the gaping darkness. Danny collapsed to his knees as soon as his feet touched the Neptune Suite’s blue, crystal-tiled floor. His whole body shook, relief mixing with a thousand _what-ifs_ still swirling in his chaotic maelstrom of a mind.

“You okay? You good?” Steve’s gaze, sharp and intense with worry, swept over Danny’s form. His hand remained wrapped in the waterlogged fabric of Danny’s shirt. The other came up to press against the side of Danny’s face. Steve’s fingers curled around the back of his partner’s neck, warm and steadying. 

Danny resisted his first instinct—which was to punch Steve right in the face—and went with his second, which was to lean into Steve’s touch for as long as possible. He closed his eyes, breathing in shaky, unsteady breaths. His heart was still pounding. The panic was beginning to abate; in its wake, it left a bone-deep exhaustion accompanied by sickening dizziness. 

Acting on instinct, Danny brought his hands up to grip Steve’s upper arms, steadying himself. The world gave a sickening jolt. He leaned forward, eyes still tightly shut, and pressed his face into the soaking fabric of Steve’s t-shirt. His cheek rested on Steve’s collarbone. He could hear the reassuringly even (at least in comparison to his own) beating of his partner’s heart. He inhaled, and even through the overpowering smell of chlorine, he could smell sea salt, gunpowder, and Steve’s favorite brand of detergent. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay, Danny, you did great.” Steve was talking in that smooth, calm tone he’d used back in the tunnels. Danny flinched as Steve’s hand slid up from his neck to cup the back of his head. Fingers ran through his damp, messy hair. Slowly, the shaking stopped and Danny’s heartrate slowed. His breathing evened out. He began to relax. “You’re okay, buddy, I’m so proud of you,” said Steve, voice thick with emotion. 

After a few seconds, Danny exhaled against Steve’s shoulder. He pulled himself back, still holding tight to Steve with both hands. He opened his eyes. The light in the room was too bright; he hadn’t had time to acclimatize. Blinking a few times to clear his vision, he lifted his chin and met Steve’s gaze directly. When he saw the raw, unfiltered worry on Steve’s face, he forced himself to smile. “I’m good, babe, I’m fine. Just, uh, not exactly my idea of a good time. This might seem strange to a Neanderthal like you but I, um, I prefer to be wined and dined before following a guy into a chemical-water-filled death trap to infiltrate a drug lord’s luxury suite.”

Looking utterly relieved that Danny’s sense of humor had reemerged, Steve laughed. He shook his head, grinning. “Wined and dined, huh? I’ll remember that, Danny. I’ll write it down on my special list of things Danno likes.”

“What, you have a list of things I like?” Danny let his hands fall from Steve’s shoulders. The world had finally stopped spinning. “I thought you thought I don’t like anything, that I hate everything.”

“It’s a short list,” Steve admitted. He rose halfway to his feet, pulling Danny up with him. He kept one steadying hand on his partner’s shoulder, even after it was clear that Danny could stand on his own. Danny was exceptionally grateful for that, although he’d never say it aloud. 

“That’s just because you don’t know what I like,” said Danny. He looked around the room for the first time, really taking in his surroundings. They were in a luxurious bathroom. The floors were blue crystal tile. Right next to the hatch they’d crawled out of was a six-person jacuzzi with about a hundred jets and faucets. “I like a lot of things, for your information.” 

“Let me see: Your kids, your car, your parents, certain types of food, locking up bad guys, the concept of owning a restaurant…” Steve counted on his fingers. “Am I missing anything?”

Danny fixed him with a withering look. “Well, I used to like you, but after what just happened, I’m reconsidering our friendship.”

Steve smirked. “Oh, c’mon, Danny. We both know you love me.”

Danny really couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t. Instead, he changed the subject. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, tell me that the surveillance gear survived. If I went through all that for nothing, I swear to God, I will end you right here and now, in the middle of this fancy rich-person bathroom.”

Steve reached into his pocket and extracted two waterproof baggies full of tiny cameras and wires. He handed one to Danny, keeping the other for himself. “There, you happy?”

Danny shook the baggie, watching droplets of water roll off the plastic and splash onto the tiled floor. He frowned. “Let’s just hurry up and finish before Marks comes back and finishes what that drainage pipe started, all right?”

Steve pulled up his sodden sleeve and looked at his watch. “We’ve got at least fifteen minutes before lunch in the dining room ends. That’s a generous estimate; we should expect Marks back here anytime between now and then. Which means we need to work fast.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Danny. Opening his plastic baggie full of surveillance gear, he pulled out a handful of cameras and wires. “What do you want? Which rooms?”

“I’ll take the main bathroom, kitchen, and hallways. You take the living room and three secondary bedrooms. We’ll meet back up in the master bedroom in ten, and finish up there. Clear?”

“Crystal.” Danny turned away, heading for the luxurious wooden door separating the bathroom from the hallway beyond. He shouldered open the door, glancing back over his shoulder at his partner as he went. “Good luck in here.” He waved a hand around at the vast, Febreze-scented bathroom. “Let’s hope Marks and his friends are a clean bunch, yeah?” 

Steve pulled out several tiny cameras and wires, dumping them next to the sink. He climbed up onto the marble counter, carefully prying a mirror off the wall. “Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Get the hell outta here, Danny.”

Danny half-closed the door behind him. “I’ll see you in ten, Steven. Try not to break anything.” He slammed the door before Steve could reply.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

Making his way down the patterned blue-carpeted hallway outside the bathroom, Danny headed for the first of the Neptune Suite’s four bedrooms. Why anyone would need a suite this big, he had no idea—unless they were an international drug dealer hosting a team of associates and business partners, of course.

Danny had just finished bugging the last of the three guest bedrooms (and the obscenely large living room, but who was counting?) when the tell-tale _beep!_ of a keycard being scanned rang out from the hallway. He straightened up. Every nerve in his body lit up with panic. Fuck, he thought, could Marks really be back already? 

Glancing around the room, he spotted an ornate bronze clock hanging over one of the guest beds. His heart sank like a lead weight. Fifteen minutes. It had been fifteen goddamn minutes since they’d arrived in the suite. _Shit._

Hardly daring to breath, Danny hastily replaced the painting he’d been wiring up (an Italian Renaissance-style portrait of three mermaids basking on a barnacle-covered rock), and slipped back out into the living room. 

To his surprise, he nearly crashed right into Steve. His partner was standing just outside in the hallways between the bedrooms and the living room. When Steve saw Danny, he moved his hand frantically up and down, palm facing the floor. The message was clear: _Stay quiet, and stay down!_

Danny shook his head. He didn’t dare speak. The person at the door scanned their card again. Thankfully, they seemed to be having trouble getting in. That bought them seconds—not close to enough time to get to the master bathroom, down the maintenance hatch, and back into the pipes. If that was even a viable escape route, which was doubtful. Danny knew for a fact that he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do something like again. Ever.

So, he thought up a new plan. It was crude, and almost definitely wouldn’t work. But hey, at least it was better than the pipes.

“ _Come here!”_ Danny mouthed. He jerked his head toward the entrance to the master bedroom. Walking with purpose, he headed into the vast, ornately-adorned room.

With confusion written across his face, Steve followed. When they were both inside, Danny closed the door, turning to face his partner. “Listen to me.” He spoke in barely-audible whisper. “I have a plan; it probably won’t work.”

“I like it already,” Steve replied, with a ghost of a grin. “What’re you thinking?”

“The windows open from inside, correct?” Danny gestured at the incredible, sprawling view of the ocean visible from the master bedroom. Steve nodded. “Good. We open a window, climb onto the sill, reach up and catch hold of one of the lifeboats’ pull-down ropes—"

“—and climb up onto the promenade deck from there, yeah.” Steve’s face was set in an intensely thoughtful expression. “Could work, but Danny, there’s a problem: I looked over the ship’s schematics before coming down here, and there’s no lifeboat above the Neptune Suite.”

Danny swore under his breath. “What, you memorized the schematics but didn’t have time to come up with an exit strategy? The hell’s the matter with you?”

“I thought we’d improvise.” Steve’s turned in place, scanning the room with the focus of a lion searching the savannah for prey.

Danny threw up his hands. “Improvise, he says! What will he improvise with, pray tell? They’re gonna find us, Steve, and when they do, they’re gonna kill us. You understand that, right?”

Out in the main hall, the sound of the suite’s door unlatching and swinging open sent Danny’s heart racing back into overdrive. They had bare seconds before they were discovered. They had to do _something,_ fast.

Danny watched Steve’s gaze sweep across the master bedroom. It came to rest on a minibar fridge leaning against the opposite wall. “Danny,” Steve said, his voice low and intense, “take off your clothes.”

Danny stared at him for half a second in speechless shock. “What, are you Terminator?” he hissed. “ _’Take off your clothes?’_ Why?” 

Under other circumstances, Steve’s words would’ve been music to his ears—in fact, he was pretty sure this was how ninety-percent of his favorite dreams started. However, given the (definitively not romantic or sexual) nature of the situation, he could only conclude that his partner had finally snapped and gone off the deep end. 

“Just do what I say.” Steve was already pulling off his own shirt. He crossed the room with almost inhuman speed and stealth. Crouching down in front of the minibar fridge, he opened the door, revealing a pyramid of bottled beer and spirits inside. He took a few bottles out, prying off lids and uncorking bottles using the multitool in his pocket. Straightening up, he paced back across the room. He handed half the bottles to Danny, who had reluctantly removed his jacket and shirt. “Open the window,” Steve instructed. “Dump these out.”

“Why should I…?”

“ _Danny!”_

“Fine!” Danny grabbed the bottles. He crossed to one of the smaller windows, beneath the larger ocean-view glass. Throwing it open, he did as Steve commanded. The multi-colored, strongly-scented alcohol drained out, spilling into the ocean far below. Some of it blew back against the ship’s flank, leaving stains of amber and cream.

Once he’d finished with the bottles, Danny closed the window. Before he could ask what to do with the empty containers, Steve swiped them away. Danny watched with mounting confusion as his partner unceremoniously dumped the used-up bottles onto the carpet and bed. Some of the residual liquid in the bottles spilled out. The scent of alcohol filled the enormous room. “What the hell…?” he began. And then it dawned on him: Steve wasn’t prepping for an all-out fight, as Danny had assumed. He was covering their tracks. Setting the scene, as it were.

Steve glanced back at Danny. In the living room, voices could be heard. Silently, Steve moved toward the bed, making a ‘ _come-here_ ’ motion with his hand. 

Still cautiously reluctant, Danny followed him. “Steve,” he hissed, his voice an indignant whisper, “this is a really shit idea.”

Steve raised his eyebrows, shrugging. He sat down on the edge of the bed, leaned over, and picked up one of the empty bottles from the floor. Tilting back his head, he let the last drips fall onto his tongue. Danny watched with mounting apprehension as his partner picked up a second bottle, offering it to him with a look that clearly said: ‘ _you know what to do._ ’

With no shirt and the muted sting of alcohol on his tongue, Danny sat down beside Steve. “What now?” he mouthed. The voices outside the room grew louder—it sounded like Marks and his partner in crime were headed for the bedroom.

Steve jerked his head toward the pile of clothes beside the discarded bottles. “Wad up your clothes and hide your weapons in them,” he whispered. “This guy knows how to spot concealed weapons.”

Danny nodded. That made sense. The rest of the plan, not so much, but at least Steve’s head was still screwed on tight enough to consider the possible consequences of being discovered in a drug lord’s den with multiple weapons strapped to his body.

Danny had just finished stashing his weapon in the (slightly damp) pile of clothes, when Richard Marks’ voice sounded in the hallway outside the master bedroom. 

“Kate, I’m gonna go find something new and exciting to wear for tonight,” Marks said. His voice was muted by the thick wooden door, but it was clear he was moments away from entering the room. “Tonight is gala night, you know. All our associates—and even a competitor or two, or so I’ve heard—will be there. We have to look the part, don’t you think?”

“Of course.” This was Kate MacRah’s voice, drifting out from the living room or kitchen. “Time as long as you need, Richard.”

Danny gave Steve a startled, panicky look. In theory, he knew the plan, but now that it came to it, he had no idea how to proceed. 

Rolling his eyes, Steve threw himself back onto the bed. Like a wolf taking down a deer, he twisted around, reaching out and pulling Danny down with him. Before Danny could comprehend what was happening, his partner had flipped him onto his back. Steve’s hands were on his shoulders, pressing him into the soft, feather-stuffed comforter. Through the hazy confusion of his overloaded mind, Danny barely even registered the tell-tale _click_ of the bedroom door as Marks pushed it open. All he could thank about was how Steve’s face was inches from his own, and the way his partner’s palms, burning with feverish heat, felt against his bare skin.

“Danny?” Steve whispered. It was just one word, but Danny read the question layered beneath it like concrete holding up a house. Steve’s expression was calm. Of course it was; all the intensity was in his eyes.

Still unsure how to form words (let alone a proper sentence), Danny nodded. “Yeah.” His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been strangled. Which made sense—emotionally, he was suffocating. “Yeah, go for it.”

The briefest smile crossed Steve’s lips. Danny watched relief flash through his partner’s eyes. And then Steve leaned down, pressing his body against Danny’s from chest to toes, and kissed him.

From the bedroom doorway, there was a sharp intake of breath. A few breathless moments later, it was followed by an angry, indignant cry of “What the _fuck_!?”

Immediately, Steve flipped over, rolling away. Danny lay where he was, blinking up at the ceiling, trying to arrange his thoughts in some semblance of normalcy. The ringing in his ears was back, but this time, it was a very different kind of panic.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Steve held up his hands. Danny watched out of the corner of his eye. Steve faced Marks with a guilty, panicked look on his face. “Oh my God, man, I’m so sorry! We didn’t mean to intrude, we’ll get out right now, I’m really sorry…!”

Sitting up slowly (he wasn’t sure if Marks had drawn a gun or not), Danny looked from Steve to Marks, then back again. “What the hell’s this, huh?” His voice still sounded like someone had sanded concrete with it. “Ross, who is this guy? The fuck’s he doing in our private suite?”

“Your private…?” Marks began. He stopped, puffing himself up like an angry hawk. Thankfully, he still hadn’t drawn a weapon. He stood in the doorway, glaring at the intruders with glacial eyes. “ _Your_ private suite? This room, and the entire Neptune Verandah suite, belongs to James Renn and Kate MacRah for the entire duration of this voyage.” Now he sounded more insulted than furious. As if finding a half-dressed (and apparently very drunk) newly-wed couple making out in his bed was unexpected, but more of a nuisance than anything. 

Huh. This guy was not at all what Danny had expected. But hey, if Marks’ un-phase-able attitude meant he and Steve wouldn’t be tortured, shot at, and/or thrown through the window to swim with the fishes, Danny certainly wasn’t complaining.

Throwing himself back into the game with renewed gusto, Danny rounded on Steve with righteous fury. “You told me—you _told_ me—that you’d gotten us an upgrade! Huh? Isn’t that right, Ross? Isn’t that what you said to me? What the fuck’s the matter with you, huh? Do you get off on lying to me, or do you _want_ to get us kicked off this boat?”

Steve ran one hand agitatedly through his hair. “Fuck, Russell, I don’t know! I wanted to impress you, I guess…”

“Well bang-up job of that, you son of a bitch.” Danny shook his head. He turned to Marks, spreading his hands in an apologetic gesture. “Hey, look, I’m sorry about my idiot husband here. He, uh, he told me this was our room now. Guess I can’t trust a word that comes out of his fucking mouth, but that’s what he said. I had no idea… I mean, shit, I’m really fucking sorry, y’know?”

Steve pressed his palm against his face. “Oh my God, Mr. Renn, I can’t believe how embarrassing this is. Again, I am super sorry for intruding like this. If there’s anything we can do—” 

“You can get out of my suite,” Marks cut Steve off. His tone was cold, even. A knife’s blade covered in frost. “Get out, and if I ever catch either of you anywhere you don’t belong, I will report you to the ship authorities, or deal with you myself.” As he spoke, his hand traveled down to rest against his hip. He pressed down delicately with two fingers. The outline of a small, compact gun became visible beneath the expensive silken fabric of his suit. “Do you understand?”

Steve and Danny exchanged a look of faux-panic. “Yeah, yes, we understand. One-hundred percent.” Danny held up his hands, palms out, in a gesture of compliance and non-resistance. “We’ll just pick up our mess and go, all right?”

“Don’t bother.” Marks’ sharp, cold gaze swept across the scattered bottles and cans. “I’ll have room service deal with it.” Then, with a thin, humorless smile, he added, “Although you might want to take your shirts. I’d hate for you fine honeymooning gentlemen to get in trouble for public indecency.”

“Wow, that’s, uh, that’s very kind of you,” said Danny.

“Again, we are so sorry about all of this,” said Steve. He stooped down, picking up the combined pile of his and Danny’s clothes. Standing up and swaying slightly, he jerked his chin toward the half-open bedroom door. “Should we just…?”

“As quickly as possible, please.” Marks stepped aside as Steve and Danny exited the room. The dapper drug lord leaned against the silver wallpaper, an almost bored expression on his chiseled face. “Be careful not to trip over any valuables on your way out, gentlemen.”

“Uh, no, we won’t. Thank you again.” Walking beside Steve, still faking drunken unsteadiness, Danny was acutely aware of how fast and hard his heart was beating. Despite Steve’s plan having worked to a T, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. 

But, as they reached the end of the Neptune Suite’s main hall and escaped into the public corridor beyond, even the steady nagging of his subconscious began to fade. The door to the verandah suite slammed shut with dull finality. The two men (dressed as room service staff but, to Danny’s observant eyes, clearly bodyguards) standing outside the suite gave them a narrow-eyed, curious look, but didn’t try to stop them leaving. Rounding a bend in the hall, Steve and Danny passed out of sight of Marks’ security at last. 

The elevator was just ahead, shining in Danny’s mind like a beacon in a storm. Relief crashed through him, flooding his body with endorphins. They’d made it. Against all odds, and with their covers intact, nonetheless. It was a tremendous accomplishment, and one they’d have to celebrate. Later. When Danny’s head was no longer throbbing to the relentlessly wild beating of his heart.

Steve stopped beside the elevator. He punched the ‘down’ button, then turned to face Danny with an unreadable expression. Danny met his gaze, trying to get anything off his partner’s closed-off look. It was like trying to see through the wrong side of one-way glass. “Let’s head back to the room,” said Steve. His tone was as carefully blank as his face. “We can start looking at the footage off those feeds.”

Danny nodded. However, his mind was wandering far away from the operation. In the aftershock of the mission, reality was finally catching up with him again. And now that it was, a hundred things vied for his immediate attention. 

Before he could bring up any of them, though, the elevator opened. Steve stepped inside, and Danny followed. Standing side-by-side in silence, they made their way back down to the lower floors.

  



	8. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

Back in their ocean-view room, Steve sat on the edge of the bed, computer balanced across his knees. He’d been working hard for the past fifteen minutes, checking audio feeds and making sure the cameras they’d planted in the Neptune Suite were up and running. Meanwhile, Danny paced the room like a wild tiger in a tiny cage. 

“So.” Steve broke the silence. The pacing was getting on his nerves; besides, he was pretty sure that the tension in the room was literally going to kill him. “Are we gonna talk about it?”

At Steve’s question, Danny paused. He turned his whole body to face his partner. “Talk about what?” His expression was controlled, his gaze guarded. “About how you dragged me through a fucking drainage pipe into yet another life-threatening situation with no exit plan? Yeah, y’know what, Steven, I think we _should_ talk about that.”

Steve cut Danny off with a sharp shake of his head. Standing up, he set the computer (now displaying a live feed of every room in the Neptune Suite) on the bedside table. He crossed his arms, inhaling deeply through his nose. Despite having been trained, mentally and physically, to withstand just about any horrible situation and torture known to mankind, nothing had prepared him for this moment. Mostly because he’d thought it would never come. Besides, in all his daydreams, there were usually no drug lords or covert operations around to complicate things. 

“Are you mad at me? Is that what this is?” Steve raised his eyebrows. His entire body was tense, rigid: arms crossed tight, head up, eyes slightly narrowed.

Danny began pacing again. A muscle in his jaw ticked. It was clear from his body language that he was as worked up as Steve. “Am I mad at…? Of _course_ I am mad at you! What did I just say, huh? About dragging me into near-death experiences? I’m not just mad, Steve, I’m furious!”

Steve passed a hand over his face. A flash of pain pierced his skull. It migrated down his neck into his spine. Suddenly, he was aware of a dull, persistent ache throughout his body. In the excitement and adrenaline-fueled panic of the mission, he’d nearly forgotten about his sickness. But now that the adrenaline had worn off, the battering his body had taken in the pipes was teaming up with the anti-radiation pills to bring him low.

Danny seemed to notice the change come over his partner. Immediately, Danny’s gaze softened. He stopped pacing. With uncharacteristic hesitancy, he took a half-step toward Steve. “Hey,” Danny said. Steve met Danny’s eyes, and (as always) was drawn in by the oceanic depth of emotion he found there. “Steve. You look like hell.”

Steve sighed. With weary reluctance, he sank back onto the bed. “Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. His fingers were strangely numb, like they belonged to someone else. Probably not a good sign, he thought, but he was too tired to do anything about it. Hopefully, like all his other symptoms, the numbness would just go away on its own. 

Danny moved to sit beside him on the bed. The mattress sank with a tired groan under their combined weight. “I’m pissed at you about the mission,” Danny said. Steve opened his mouth to retort, but Danny cut him off with a look and a sharp gesture. “No, shut it, I’m not finished, all right? Let me talk.” Steve nodded. He was too exhausted to argue, anyway. Danny cleared his throat, starting again. “I’m pissed at you about the mission. But I’m not… I don’t care what happened. Between us, in Marks’ room, I don’t care. We’re uh, we’re undercover, right? It’s part of the job.”

The dull ache in Steve’s body condensed into a ball around his heart. He knew, he _knew_ this was the best he was going to get. At least Danny wasn’t upset. At least his partner hadn’t been disgusted, or stormed off as soon as they were clear of Marks’ suite. That was something. But honestly—and Steve was in no mood for playing mind games with anyone, let alone himself—it wasn’t enough. Really, when it came to Danny, nothing would ever be enough. If Steve lived a thousand lifetimes and died a thousand deaths, he’d never get over Danny Williams. His love was a fact. Like the inexorable expansion of the universe, there was no stopping it. 

Danny was looking at him. Steve felt it like a little red dot over his heart. All Danny had to do was say the wrong thing—squeeze the trigger, so to speak—and Steve would fall. Tilting his chin down, Steve braced his elbows on his knees and pressed his palms hard against his eyes.

“You know,” Danny said, after a few moments of tense silence, “you’re not a bad kisser.”

Steve jerked his head up in surprise. He fixed Danny with a shocked, questioning look. Of all the things he’d imagined Danny might say, that was pretty much at the bottom of the list.

Danny smirked at him. Not a smile. An honest-to-God _smirk._ “Well, I mean, not bad for an uncultured animal such as yourself. But, uh, if you wanna join the major leagues, babe, you’ll need to up your game.” He tilted his head, lifting one eyebrow.

Steve’s entire body lit up from head to toe as if someone had doused him in gasoline and dropped a match in his hair. Suddenly, breathing was hard. His brain felt like someone had put it in a Vita-mixer set to high. Forming words was nearly impossible. At first, all he could do was blink, staring at Danny with the kind of blank incredulity usually reserved for clueless tourists and uncooperative perps. 

“What, you gonna say something, or are you just gonna stare at me all day? Huh? Earth to Steve!” Although Danny was fighting to keep up his tough, unruffled exterior, Steve heard the slight waver in his partner’s voice. For the first time, Steve wondered if, by some miracle of fate, this might be as hard for Danny as it was for him _because Danny felt the same way._

Steve immediately pushed that thought out of his head. Of course not, what was he thinking? Danny was just being Danny. Using humor to cope with a stressful situation, as was his MO. 

Nothing more, nothing less. 

“Yeah, yeah; I heard you. I’m an animal.” Steve stood up. The bed groaned as loudly as he wanted to. “Y’know, Danny, if I’m such an animal, then what does that make you, huh? Now that we’ve kissed, you might wanna curb the insults there, buddy, because if you’re not careful, you’re gonna end up making yourself look bad.”

Danny’s expression turned from cocky and playful to closed off and confused in 0.1 seconds. He pressed his lips together, watching Steve walk away with something approaching resentment. He opened his mouth, looking like he was about to start some shit, and then shrugged and frowned instead. “Huh. Okay.”

“Okay what?” Steve reached the other side of the bed, next to the bedside table. He sat down, returning his attention to the computer. His whole chest hurt, dull and painful. Not in the way the rest of him hurt, though: This was specific, and, unlike the radiation, there were no pills he could take to chase it off.

Danny was silent for much longer than usual. “Okay, as in _‘we’re not gonna talk about it,’_ okay.”

Steve fought the sudden urge to hit something. This wasn’t his strong suit; he wasn’t good at this. Drop him in the middle of the Sahara Desert with nothing but a parachute, some matches, and half a sheet of plastic wrap, and he’d survive for weeks. But lock him in a small, dim, cramped room with the man he was wildly, irrationally, dangerously in love with (and whom he had just kissed half-naked on a luxury bed, nonetheless), and he fell apart like a dinghy with a split hull. 

“Do you _want_ to talk about it?” Steve fought to keep his voice steady. He wanted to turn around, to face Danny, but he didn’t. He kept his eyes glued to the computer screen. Everything inside him, all the things he felt, that he’d felt for years, glowed and burned like the heart of a massive star. He was already running low on fuel—if he wasn’t careful, he might go supernova. 

“I, uh, no?” Danny seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “If you, um, if you’d rather just… let it go…”

Steve jabbed at the keyboard. The computer responded to his harsh, bitter touch the same way it would to a softer, kinder one. Machines were so much easier than humans, he thought. Emotions could be such a pain in the ass.

Danny fell silent again. Steve tried not to worry about it. Nothing irreparable had been done. They could forget this moment and move on, go back to the way they were before. They’d survived worse. Their relationship had survived worse. One awkward incident wasn’t going to ruin anything.

“Seven billion people on this planet,” said Danny. His voice was low, rough. “Seven billion people on this planet, Steve, and I had to go and fall in love with you.”

Steve nearly dropped the computer. He was sure he’d misheard that. There was no way… he _had_ to have been imagining things, right? Maybe his medications were making him hallucinate…?

Danny stood up. Setting the computer down, Steve was on his feet in an instant. They faced each other across the bed. Steve blinked, still trying to process what he’d just heard Danny say. “Danny.” Steve’s voice was equally rough. He was holding back so much, fighting the heat of the star expanding in his chest. “Danny, what…?”

Danny shook his head. His expression was caught between exaltation and desperation, like a stranded man watching a rescue plane pass overhead. “Listen to me, Steve, all right? I’ve been… I’m not…” He gestured aimlessly, searching for words. “I’m not great at… _this_. _”_ He made a motion between them. “You know, relationships, marriage, all of that. I’m just not. But listen, I’ve been thinking, and uh, well, maybe that’s not how it has to be. Or, even if it is, even if I’m always gonna be bad at love, maybe I’m not happy… maybe I haven’t _been_ happy… because I was with the wrong people. Y’know?”

Steve tried to find some way to say yeah, of course, that was exactly how he felt. He’d thought he’d found a perfect match in Catherine; when she left, he’d all but given up on the dream of having a family of his own. Looking back on it now, he realized it never would’ve worked out anyway. Catherine was in love with her job, with saving people and fighting the world’s monsters. She wasn’t the type to settle down. 

And Steve? Well, on top of being married to his job—and he was; he couldn’t imagine life without the work that gave it meaning—he was and had been deeply, utterly, irreversibly in love with Danny for more than seven years. 

Talk about a relationship deal-breaker.

“Maybe I’m wrong.” Danny’s voice snapped Steve out of his spiraling thoughts and back into the present. “Maybe what I’m doing right now, what I’m saying, it’ll ruin everything. Everything we have, everything between us. But hear me out: before you pass judgement or rethink our relationship, I just want you to know: everything that’s happened to me, all the shit I’ve been through, I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if I knew it’d bring me back here, to this moment. To you. To this moment where I tell you, without any doubt, that I love and have loved you in a way that many people—most people—never get to experience. And I don’t care, Steve; for once, I’m not scared of the consequences. Of what will happen if I do or if I don’t. I love you, and that’s all that matters. All right? That’s all that matters.”

Steve didn’t hesitate after that. He didn’t pause to plan a course of action. The star in his chest collapsed, and then erupted outward with so much force it knocked the air from his lungs. He was burning from the inside out; as he stepped around the bed and into Danny’s personal space, he knew for a fact that the explosion would kill them both.

But that was the thing, he thought, as they fell into each other: they’d die together, sheathed in fire. A billion years in the future their light would be visible throughout the universe. A pinprick in time, a moment of brightness suspended in the waxing dark. 

Worth it, he thought, and closed his eyes to savor the way his body fell apart in the flames. Of course it was worth it.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Chapter Nine**

Danny awoke to the sound of fingers tapping on a keyboard. He sat bolt upright, blinking against the sharp rays of sunlight cutting through the slatted curtains. The tapping stopped. Looking to his left, Danny saw Steve, only partially clad, sitting with his back to the headboard and a computer balanced in his lap. Steve looked at him. Their eyes met. Steve smiled. The smile was hesitant, but overall Steve’s expression was open, his posture relaxed. 

“Look who’s finally decided to rejoin the world of the living,” said Steve. 

Danny studied his partner’s face. His eyes traced the familiar curves, ridges, and lines. As far as he could tell, Steve wasn’t uncomfortable, nervous, or regretful of what had happened between them. And he hadn’t bolted, either, which Danny was eternally grateful for. After everything Danny had said, everything he’d _done_ last night _,_ he wasn’t sure if he could survive Steve’s rejection. 

“So…” Steve was still watching him. There was the faintest hint of concern growing in his eyes. The longer Danny remained silent, the stronger it got. “Do you, uh… do you think we should…?”

“Talk about last night?” Danny shook his head. “No, nope. Bad idea. I’ve got a better one, though. Everything we did last night, let’s do it all again. Right here. Right now.”

Steve laughed. It was a deep, rumbling sound, like summer thunder muted by heavy fog. “Y’know what, Danny, I’d love to. You know I would. But actually, we, uh, we have a problem.” Steve gestured at the computer. The screen displayed dual surveillance feeds from the Neptune Suite and Richard Marks’ ocean-view suite.

Danny groaned. He slumped back against the headboard, his pillow wadded up between the board and his lower back. “Problem? What do you mean, ‘ _problem_?’”

Steve shrugged. “Well, it might be nothing. But think about it, Danny: this guy, Marks, he’s a genius when it comes to moving coke. And according to our intel, he’s been in the business for over fifteen years; no one’s been able to get charges to stick.”

Danny turned his head, meeting Steve’s steady gaze. A pang of frustration went through him. This was so fucking unfair. After seven years, he’d finally gotten everything he wanted. And now that he had, some stupid smuggling operation was getting in the way.

Steve seemed to read the reluctance and longing in Danny’s eyes as easily as if he’d voiced his thoughts aloud. Steve sighed. “What I’m saying, Danny, is I don’t think Marks bought our cover. I mean, think about it. How did we get into the Neptune Suite? If we’re just some hapless newlywed couple, how did we get past his security?”

Danny frowned. “Maybe we climbed through the window. Ross and Russell did, I mean.”

“The windows lock from the inside. Marks left them closed and locked; he’s too smart not to.”

“Maybe we…” Danny tried to think of another way into the room that didn’t involve the water pipes. He came up empty. 

“Exactly. Besides,” Steve continued, “we made it look like we walked through the front door. Remember, you—Russell Lancaster, you—were supposed to think I’d booked the suite for us. How would I’ve convinced you that that suite was ours unless we walked through the front door? You see the problem here?”

Danny ran a hand through his messy hair. He swore under his breath. This was so not how he’d hoped the morning would go. But Steve had a point, and an important one. If Marks knew who they were, or even guessed at their purpose aboard the ship, their operation was headed for very dangerous waters.

“Maybe we can convince Marks that his security is lax. That you payed his guards off to let us in.” Danny knew it was a longshot. From the look Steve gave him, his partner thought so, too. “Don’t give me that look,” Danny said, mildly insulted. “If we can remove suspicion and get Marks to stop trusting his guards, that’s two birds with one stone.”

Steve returned his gaze to the computer. His face was lined with concentration. “So far I haven’t heard or seen anything to indicate he’s onto us.”

Danny pushed himself into an upright position. He leaned against Steve to get a better look at the screen. He rested his chin on Steve’s shoulder. “So what, maybe Marks doesn’t think like you. Maybe he’s not worried. Like you said, he’s never been caught red-handed. Charges don’t stick. Maybe he’s used to being untouchable, and doesn’t think anyone would dare do something as incredibly stupid as breaking into his luxury suite, anyway.”

Steve was silent for a long moment. He took out his wireless earpiece, setting it on the bedside table. Sighing, he passed a hand over his face. “Marks is paranoid, Danny. He’s too smart to get caught red-handed; that’s why we’re here. Right now, we have nothing. The only reason I haven’t noticed anything indicating he’s onto us is because I haven’t seen or heard anything at all _._ Just a bunch of over-the-top sweet-talk between him and MacRah.”

Danny made a discontented noise in the back of his throat. He sat up a bit straighter. His side was still pressed to Steve’s from shoulder to hip as he watched the dim images on the screen. “You’re saying what, then? That Marks hasn’t been in contact with anyone apart from MacRah? Huh? How is that possible, Steve? It’s been more than twelve hours since we got those cameras up. How the hell has he been in the suite this whole time and not said anything useful?”

Steve shrugged. “I dunno, Danny. That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out. Hopefully, we’ll come back into cell range soon, and I can patch these feeds through to the guys at the Palace. Then we can get a more thorough analysis.”

Danny nodded. “Going through spy-grade surveillance footage looking for evidence to put away a notorious crime lord… Jerry’ll be ecstatic.”

Steve lifted the computer up. He swung his legs off the bed, setting the device on the bedside table beside his earpiece. He stood up in one lithe, graceful movement. 

Danny watched the stripped sunlight dance along the muscled lines and curves of his partner’s body. It was mesmerizing. Again, the reality of what had happened the night before hit him; he felt suddenly light-headed and breathless. Disbelief warred with euphoria. It took all his willpower not to jump up and drag Steve back into bed right then and there.

“Watch the feeds,” Steve instructed. He headed for the bathroom.

Danny heaved a deep sigh. Rolling onto his side, he propped his head up in his cupped palm. Even in the dull light of early morning, the dim images on the screen were hard to see. From what he could make out, Marks and MacRah were standing in the living room of the Neptune Suite, facing each other without speaking. He reached for the earpiece. He put it on, and immediately, a deep buzzing sound—background static and the distant rumbling of the ship’s engines, most likely—filled his ear. Huh. So the feeds were definitely working. Marks hadn’t disabled them, and yet Steve said they hadn’t picked up anything useful. Weird. 

Five minutes later, Steve emerged from the bathroom. Danny sat up. He opened his mouth, about to comment on the still-damp, messy nature of Steve’s towel-dried hair, when a voice in his ear cut him off. It crackled with static, words distorted by distance. But even with the distortion, Danny could tell it was Richard Marks.

“ _The show starts in five minutes, Kate. I’ve got people in position in Theater A. After this little detour, we’ll go back to the original plan._ ” 

Danny sat up. He tilted the computer screen back to get a better look at what was going on in the room. Marks was speaking to Kate MacRah, who nodded in agreement with his every word. 

“Steve,” Danny said, “Steve, I think I’ve got something.”

Steve was across the room and on the bed in an instant. He knelt beside Danny, staring intently at the computer’s screen over his shoulder. “Talk to me, Danny. What’re they saying?”

Danny pressed the earpiece deeper into his ear. Marks was still talking, his voice low and hushed like the trickling of a little stream. “ _I told Arthur I’d meet him at the Theater in row 5, seats D and C. Once I’ve made contact, we’ll head down to the morgue to check on the supply._ ”

Danny’s heart lurched. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Marks is telling MacRah that he’s meeting someone named Arthur in Theater A. They’re meeting up in audience row 5, seats D and C, then heading down to the morgue to check on the supply.” Danny looked back at Steve, and saw his own mix of exaltation and realization in his partner’s eyes. “The morgue. The cargo is in the morgue.”

Steve didn’t say anything. He leapt off the bed and headed for the closet. Within thirty seconds, he was dressed, hair dried, and had half a dozen weapons of varying sizes and uses strapped under his clothes. 

Danny followed suit. By the time he was dressed and armed, Steve was pacing impatiently, watching the computer intently. “Danny, they’re moving out now.” Steve’s voice was a wire pulled taut, tense and sharp as a new-forged blade.

Danny’s disappointment at having to postpone further exploration of his and Steve’s new relationship was forgotten. There would be plenty of time for that later. Right now, they had a drug lord to catch. 

. . . . . .

Ten minutes later, they entered Theater A. Danny followed Steve down the aisles, visually scanning the over-stuffed red, purple, and blue armchairs and couches facing the main stage. The lights in the room were up. The performers were nowhere to be seen. A flashy announcer with a microphone strutted up and down the stage, backed by the repetitive beat of loud, popular music. 

“Two minutes ‘till our show, ladies and gentlemen!” the announcer cried. He flashed a too-white smile at the watchful, waiting audience. “We have a great one for you this morning. A real treat to start off your day!”

“Danny.” Steve paused. They’d reached the row directly behind row 5. Steve indicated a pair of armchairs behind seats 5-D and 5-C. Steve sat down. Danny sat beside him. 

“Steve, if Marks sees us here, he’ll know something’s up,” Danny said. He could hear the tension in his own voice. Every inch of his body was electric with anticipation. 

Steve glanced at Danny; their gazes locked. Danny tried to read his partner’s thoughts from Steve’s expression, and ended up with a confusing, shifting blend: excitement, determination, resolve. Whatever happened, Steve wasn’t going to let Marks get away this time. Danny was sure of that.

“Listen, Danny,” Steve said. “Marks already knows that we know. That’s why he said what he said when he said it. He knew we were listening. Right now, we’re exactly where he wants us to be.”

Danny blinked as a wave of icy fear washed over him. Of course, he’d known that was a possibility. But to hear Steve say it aloud, and with such conviction, was something else. “Then this is a trap, Steve!” he hissed. “This is a trap, and we have to… to… I don’t know, but not _be here!_ Are you crazy? If you know Marks wants us to follow him, what’re you doing playing into his hands like this?”

Steve smiled. The kind of sly, slightly mischievous, _I-Know-Something-You-Don’t_ smile that made Danny want to punch him and kiss him at the same time. “Relax,” he said. “If Marks is still going off the assumption that we think our cover is secure, we have the upper hand. We let Marks lead us away from the theater to wherever he plans on killing us. Before he gets the chance, we take out his security and arrest him. That way, we reduce the risk to civilians and make the situation easier to contain. Marks wants to dispose of us somewhere secret, right? Without making a big mess? Well, we use his knowledge of the ship to our advantage. We turn the tables on him. We’ll avoid making a scene, because Marks will make sure no one’s around to see anything.”

Danny frowned. “We have no proof that he’s done anything wrong, Steve. In fact, we’re the ones who were trespassing in _his_ suite! Do you really, _really_ wanna open that massive can of worms?”

Just then, the lights in the room went down. The announcer glanced around, ivory grin still fixed on his face, and lifted the microphone to his lips. In the sudden dimness, he was cloaked in a circle of bright white light. “Well, now!” the announcer said, in a loud, ringing voice. “I guess that’s the signal for our show to begin! We’re starting a minute early, but no matter…”

The word ‘matter’ had just passed his lips when a gunshot rang out. With a dramatic gasp befitting his profession, the announcer clutched his chest and sprawled out on the stage. Immediately, a pool of red spread out around his twitching torso. His eyes, open wide, stared fixedly at the vaulted ceiling. 

The two-tiered theater erupted into chaos. Screams filled the huge, airy space. People ducked down or fought to get out of their seats, desperate to reach the exits. 

Danny was on his feet at once. Steve was already up, gun drawn, sighting around the room in search of the shooter. Before either of them could do anything, though, a familiar voice boomed out through the massive speakers above the stage.

“ _Everyone, stay in your seats! The exits have been blocked. My personal security is watching the doors, and I have snipers positioned throughout the room. If anyone attempts to leave, they’ll be shot in the head. If you stay down, and you stay quiet, you will stay alive. Do you understand?_ ”

Slowly, with a few muted screams and sobs, the audience—around four hundred people total—retook their seats. They sat still and silent, some physically leaning on their neighbors for support. Every few seconds, a soft cry or curse could be heard.

_“Thank you! That wasn’t so hard,_ ” said Richard Marks. His voice was steady, even. It was evident from his tone that he was in control of the situation, and he knew it. “ _Now, for my next trick, I’ll need a volunteer. Or two! Mr. Ross and Mr. Russell Lancaster, both of you need to come up to the stage. If you decide that you’d rather not, I’ll begin shooting people. For every minute you resist, six people die. Your move, gentlemen._ ” 

Danny’s mouth had gone entirely dry. His heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings in his chest. He felt sick. The situation had deteriorated so fast, he could barely process what had just happened.

Steve was looking at him with laser intensity. “Danny,” he said, voice rough and ragged as a gravel road. “Danny, I…”

Before Steve could say anything else, Danny cut him off with a sharp shake of his head. “No, Steve, no. No heroics, all right? This guy has control. We have to give him what he wants, _now._ Otherwise, more innocent people are gonna die.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Steve nodded. He put away his gun. Danny watched him, memorizing every aspect of his partner’s face, the way he moved. In case. Just in case.

Together, with their hands up and their weapons concealed, Danny and Steve made their way to the stage. “Do you want us to climb up, or what?” Danny yelled to the room at large. Since he was talking through the speakers, there was no telling where Marks really was. For all they knew, he could be at the far end of the ship, watching his plan unfold from a safe distance. 

“ _Get on the stage,_ ” Marks commanded. _“Face the audience on your knees with your hands clasped behind your heads._ ”

Danny and Steve did as the drug lord commanded. Danny flinched at the sharp sound his and Steve’s shoes made on the hardwood surface of the stage. He expected a bullet to hit him at any moment. His mind spun like a tornado, searching for something, anything… some way to get everyone out of the theater alive and in one piece.

Steve knelt on the hardwood. Danny knelt beside him. In the half-dark of the room, the audience was a blur of nameless, shapeless faces. Four hundred people waiting in silence. A funeral party dressed to die.

“ _Good. Now that I have you in my sights—_ ” two red dots of light appeared over Steve and Danny’s hearts, “— _I’m going to give you a choice. One of you will stay here in the theater, and make sure that no one outside this vessel knows what’s happening aboard it. The other will come with me and my team as insurance, so to speak. And trust me when I say: if either of you try to play hero, you will both suffer for it. I’m creative when I’m pissed off. I’ve been in this business a long, long time. If you make me angry, you will regret it._ ” There was a beat of silence. The whole room shuddered at the threat hanging over them like a sharpened blade. “ _So I ask you now: who will stay, and who will go? You have thirty seconds to decide. If you don’t give me a prompt and definitive answer, I’ll shoot another hostage._ ”

Danny looked at Steve. He saw his own panic reflected in his partner’s hazel eyes. “Steve…”

Steve shook his head. His jaw was clenched, resolve freezing the oceans in his eyes. “Danny, I’ll go with them. You handle the passengers. Make sure everyone stays safe.”

Danny was silent for a second. It was all he could afford. Then, in a voice as soft as cotton yet as hard as diamond, he said, “I love you, remember? I love you, Steve, and that’s all that matters.” Speaking up, he called out to the disembodied phantom of their nemesis. “I’ll go with you! I’ll be your fucking insurance, all right? Just leave him alone. Let him handle the passengers, he’s good at that. We’ll play nice. That’s a promise, okay? Just uh, don’t… don’t hurt anyone else, all right?”

Through the speakers, Marks chuckled. “ _Oh, a promise? Very good! I’ll hold you to it._ ” His voice boomed out, covering Steve’s inevitable protests. “ _Step down off the stage. Security—my security—will escort you out of the room. And remind that partner of yours that if he moves, I’ll shoot seven more people dead. If one of them happens to be you, so be it. My snipers aren’t particular, or particularly accurate, for that matter.”_ He laughed again. The sound was cold and harsh as a northern winter.

Danny stood up. He stepped off the stage. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. If he did, he might break. He felt Steve’s gaze, bright and intense and desperate, fixed on the back of his head. Taking a deep breath, Danny nodded at the two security guards (dressed as ship security, surprisingly enough) who walked up to meet him. He faked a smile. If he wanted to survive this, he’d have to keep up the act, the bravado. If he let these people know how desperate he really was, how terrified, they’d tear him apart like sharks scenting blood in the water.

The guards seized his shoulders. Their grips were steel clamps. He gritted his teeth, and stubbornly refused to flinch. “This way.” One of them jerked his head toward an emergency exit at the far end of the vast room. Reluctantly, Danny allowed himself to be marched out of the theater. The urge to look back was so fierce, so overpowering he almost couldn’t fight it. He lifted his chin, keeping his head high as his captors lead him away from the stage. Away from Steve. _We’ll be fine,_ he told himself. _We’ll be fine; we always are. Steve will figure something out. He always figures something out, right? Even if it’s some stupid, bone-headed plan, he’ll make it work. This isn’t it. This isn’t over._

He closed his eyes, and tried desperately to believe it.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Chapter Ten**

Steve remained on his knees until the exit door slammed shut behind Danny. He didn’t realize he had risen to his feet until Marks’ voice came through the speakers, sharp and loud and furious: “ _I said_ stay on your knees _! If you disobey me again, I will shoot another hostage. What do I have to lose, Commander? And what do_ you _have to lose? Ask yourself that. And then weight your words and actions more carefully.”_

Steve gritted his teeth. Slowly, he lowered himself back onto the stage. He re-clasped his hands behind his head. Every nerve in his body was on fire with fury and anticipation. _What do I have to lose?_ Marks’ electrified echo slunk through the stuffy, vaulted space. Steve closed his eyes for a second. _What do I have to lose?_ He couldn’t even begin to answer that question. Marks held all the cards. Steve had shown his hand: a worthless spread. And unlike Marks, he had bet everything. 

“ _All right. Everybody, listen up._ ” Marks’s voice was cold, devoid of emotion. It seemed he was done gloating and making personal threats. At least for the time being. “ _All communication channels in and out of the ship have been disabled. If anyone attempts to contact anybody outside of this vessel—be that loved ones, friends, acquaintances, or law enforcement of any kind—I will be alerted to the attempt, and to the location from which the attempt was made. And trust me, folks, it’s not worth being a hero. Because here’s the thing they don’t tell you about heroes in all those big Hollywood movies: real heroes, they don’t get to ride off into the sunset, or get married and live happily ever after. Real heroes, more often than not, suffer horribly, sacrifice everything, and die alone. Which is certainly the kind of hero you’ll be if you piss me off.”_

Steve couldn’t help but feel that this little speech was meant especially for him. His blood was boiling, but he managed to keep himself calm, at least externally. If he was going to make it through this alive—if _they_ were going to make it through this alive—he’d have to keep his cool. _You were trained for this_ , he told himself as panic gnawed through the stitches of his sanity. Hold it together. Hold it together. 

“ _Good! Now that we’re clear on that little detail, I want everyone in the room to stand up. Stand up, and…_ ” Suddenly, Marks’ voice was cut off midsentence by a burst of static. There was a loud cry of “ _NO!_ ”, followed by a crackling explosion of voiceless electronic sound. 

A second later, a new voice spoke into the speakers. “ _Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Head of Cruise Security, Margret Rox, speaking. You will be happy to hear that the man responsible for the ordeal you have just lived through has been apprehended and is now in custody. The threat has been neutralized. I assure you that you are all safe now._ ” It was a woman’s voice. It took Steve a moment to recognize it, but when he did, the momentary burst of relief he’d felt faded like summer snow. 

It was Kate MacRah. 

_“Please,”_ MacRah continued, her voice sleek and smooth as an ice sculpture, _“remain seated until security sweeps the room and makes absolutely sure that all secondary threats have been dealt with. Try to stay calm. Paramedics and nurses will be on the scene as soon as they’re given the all-clear by security._ _I understand that what you just experienced was extremely traumatic, but protocol must be followed to ensure that no further injury or loss of life occurs._ ”

Steve stared out into the dark, silent crowd. MacRah’s voice faded. The speakers cut off with another burst of static. Sobs and cries of relief filled the theater. People sank into their chairs, crying and hugging loved ones and strangers in the throes of their relief. 

As Steve rose to his feet, reaching for his gun (just to make sure it was still there—it was, of course it was; if Marks had wanted him not to have it, he wouldn’t have it), the world spun around him. He hadn’t seen this coming. Despite all his speculation, all his profiling and mental maneuvering, he would never have guessed in a billion years that Richard Marks would take an entire cruise ship hostage _without any of the hostages knowing._

Because that was what he was doing, wasn’t it? Letting them think they were free, when every single one was a prisoner.

Correction: letting everyone _but Steve_ think that they were free. The choice to have MacRah be the announcer must’ve been deliberate. This was another message, another threat. A subtler one. One meant for Steve, and Steve alone: _The others think it’s over. It’s not. You know it’s not, and no one will ever believe you._

Steve understood what would happen next. The second phase in Marks’ plan. It was obvious: first, the ship’s captain would say he’d contacted the cruise company and the Coast Guard. That he’d reported the incident. No one would see the gun to his head, the red-gloved finger hovering over the intercom button. Ready to cut him off if he deviated from the script by a single word. They’d tell the passengers that the authorities had been alerted, that the situation was under control. They’d make sure no one felt the need to take things into their own hands. Silence and compliance: that was Marks’ goal.

After that, the passengers would be told that the ship would stay its course for Seattle. At this point in the voyage, returning to Honolulu would take just as long. Maybe longer. Those in shock or suffering psychological damage from their ordeal would be given access to the vessel’s medical facilities and staff. Medical staff who, like everyone but Steve, Danny, and the highest-ranking officers, would be blissfully ignorant of the real situation. Of the fact that the crisis that had begun in Theater A was anything but over.

 _He’s taken control of the top officers,_ Steve thought. He stood on the stage, still too wrapped up in intense contemplation to do anything else just yet. _He has the wheel. That’s all you need to steer the ship._

Just then, the exits burst open and a flood of security officers entered the room. Some seemed so genuinely concerned and nervous as they walked up and down the aisles, flicking on lights and searching behind curtains, that Steve wondered how many were even Marks’ men. Of course, the real security guards wouldn’t know what had happened, either. And they wouldn’t believe Steve if he told them. Why should they? He was just another passenger, until he revealed his true identity. And he couldn’t do that, because if he did, he had the horrible feeling that Marks would retaliate.

Until he got Danny back, that wasn’t a risk he was anywhere near willing to take.

“Sir. Sir, are you all right?” A security officer stared up at Steve, head tilted back as he looked up at the stage. There was concern written in every line of his young face. This man had blond hair and bright blue eyes that looked like they were trained to see too much of the world’s cruelty, and had. Although the resemblance wasn’t remarkable by any means, Steve’s heart launched into his throat, aching. 

“I’m fine.” Steve’s voice was rough, ragged. He cleared his throat. Forced his heart back into his chest, where it slammed against his ribs as if trying to break free. To escape the cage of fear his body had become. 

The security guard stood back, giving him room to step down off the stage. “Are you hurt?” the guard asked. 

Steve shook his head. It was true, physically speaking. He wasn’t the least bit unsteady as he started down the aisle toward the nearest exit. His body was fine. 

His mind, however, was in pieces. A mirror dropped on a marble floor. But he couldn’t ask the paramedics to help him clean _that_ up. If he did—if he told anyone what he knew—more people would die. ( _Danny could die_.) The shards would get everywhere, pierce veins and arteries until the ship sank beneath a tide of blood. 

No, right now, all he could do was keep his mouth shut and think of something ( _anything, anything at all_ ) that he could do to salvage the situation. To undo Marks’ plan, free the hostages ( _all of them, please, let me save all of them_ ) and return to shore. And to do it all without Marks, or any of Marks’ associates, realizing what he was up to.

 _Mission: Impossible doesn’t even begin to cover it._ Even though he wasn’t physically there to voice it, Steve could almost hear Danny’s inevitable sarcasm as soon as he assessed the severity of the situation. He closed his eyes, briefly pressing one hand against the gold-patterned wall for support. _Keep it together,_ he told himself firmly. _For fuck’s sake, this is too important to care about._

Steve pushed aside the exit door, and emerged into the unfiltered light of the passageway beyond. _This is where they took Danny,_ was all he could think. _They left the theater this way._ He looked for footprints in the purple carpet; of course, they all led back into the theater. The guards had mangled any trace of a trail.

Resigned to finding another way, Steve pulled back his shoulders, lifted his chin, and inhaled deeply a few times. Steadying himself. Once he was sure he was no longer in danger of stumbling (or collapsing), he pushed away from the wall. The fire raging inside of him calmed with every step he took away from the theater. A controlled burn, rather than a wildfire. 

Somewhere along the way, Steve broke into a run. He made it to the elevator. He slammed his palm against the _‘down’_ arrow so hard the button stayed stuck in its sunken position. 

He didn’t care if he’d broken it. He couldn’t care. 

The door slid open, and he stepped inside. Thankfully, he was alone. Backing up, he leaned against the far rail. The back of his head hit the cold metal wall. He closed his eyes, feeling the vibrations through his body as the metal box sank, rattling on its cords. _Hold on, Danny,_ he thought, desperation and panic eating away at his shield of calm. _Just hold on. I’m coming._

He sent out a prayer to anything and anyone that might be listening that he wouldn’t come too late.


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Chapter Eleven**

Other than the fact that the air was freezing cold and he could smell salt, there was nothing to tell Danny where the hell he was. The room was pitch-black. The ground moved under him, tilting from left to right and back again in an endless cycle. His hands were tied behind his back, the cuffs painfully tight. He couldn’t feel his fingers. His back was to an uncomfortable grate; the metal slats pressed into his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. When he inhaled, his lungs burned from the cold. _The freezer room,_ he thought. He tilted his head back, resting against the frigid metal wall. Marks was cunning, he was a criminal mastermind. But he was also sadistic and insane. 

Danny should’ve seen this this coming. 

Despite Marks’ reputation, however, Danny couldn’t help but wonder: if he died in here, wouldn’t Marks lose his insurance? Wasn’t he afraid of Steve’s retribution? 

It took him another few seconds to realize that Marks had an entire _theater_ full of leverage to hold over Steve. If he decided Danny wasn’t worth the trouble, then that was it. End of the line. 

Inhaling deeply (and wincing at the way the frigid air stuck in his throat), he struggled to see anything in the oppressive darkness. The unnatural movement of the ship was making him sick. Or maybe that had more to do with whatever drug Marks’ men had used to incapacitate him. Closing his eyes (not that that did much good), he cast his awareness like a net over the room. He couldn’t see anything. But he had five other perfectly good senses to work with. 

The door at the far end of the room burst open. There was a screeching sound of half-frozen hinges, immediately followed by a blast of dull blue light. Voices filled the room, loud and raucous as crows circling carrion on the tundra. 

_Marks’ men._

Danny opened his eyes. He blinked against the sudden brightness. He sat up as much as he could. The cuffs bit into his skin; he refused to wince despite the vicious pain that raced up his arms like an electric shock. Something startlingly warm slid down his thumb. Blood, he realized. It dripped off his fingertips and onto the freezing metal floor. He fixed his gaze on the silhouettes of Marks’ men, outlined against the bright light in the hallway beyond the freezer. He tilted his chin up, and refused to look as weak and confused as he felt. 

One of Marks’ men—a tall, dark-haired guy who looked like he’d be equally at home in his five-thousand-dollar business suit as he in an old sports t-shirt and some ratty blue jeans—raised his eyebrows at Danny. He crossed his arms, tilting his head to one side like an inquisitive parrot. “Enjoying your cruise so far?” His mocking tone echoed through the vast, half-empty room. 

Danny shrugged. “Personally, I’m more of a resort guy.” His voice was as choppy as the ocean beneath them. “I, um, I’m not the biggest fan of the water, you see.” _Or of freezing my ass off in a cramped metal cage,_ he added silently. There was no point in giving away the extent of his discomfort. The longer he kept up the act, the more fun he made it for these guys, the longer he’d stay alive. 

The man in the fancy suit took a step forward. His two companions, both hired thugs, (as far as Danny could tell) moved in perfect tandem with their leader. All around them boxes of labeled foods and drinks stood in neat stacks and rows. Thick, icy fog slunk and twisted between them like ghostly cats in a dark alley. The overhead lights, two flickering blue pinpricks, were their slit eyes. 

Danny tensed as the three men approached. He wasn’t sure what their intention were, but they couldn’t be good. He’d been in situations like this before. Unless Marks’ goons were there to make sure he hadn’t a.) died or b.) escaped, they probably had something a little more unpleasant planned. “Hey, look,” he said. “I’m not sure what you schmucks want from me, but I’m guessing you don’t have permission to kill me unless my partner does something extraordinarily stupid.” (Unfortunately, knowing Steve, that was a definite possibility.) “So uh, so I have to ask: what the hell are you doing down here? Does your boss know you’re wasting company time messing around in the ice box when he’s got a hostage crisis to deal with? Huh?” 

Expensive-suit-guy glanced from one goon to the other. The three of them smiled in synch. “Your partner’s dead,” said the man in the suit. “Marks has control of the ship. That’s why we’re here. To gloat.” 

Danny’s entire body went cold, and it had nothing to do with the fact that he was sitting in a freezer. He exhaled ice. When he tried to breathe in, he found that he couldn’t. “That’s bullshit,” he said. Because it had to be; there was no way in heaven or hell that could be true. “He’s not… he _can’t be_ …” 

Marks’ men just kept smiling. Horrible, twisted expressions of sadistic pleasure. “Oh, but he _is._ And now you, you’re more expendable than ever. Which means that the boss gave us clearance to end you. Right here and now.” 

Danny felt like a coin dropped in a spiral fountain, spinning and spinning on his way down. The void yawned ahead. He was moments from the fall. 

Pressing his head back against the slatted grate, he gathered all his grief, all his resolve, into a single condensed ball of fiery anger. He focused on the pain of the cuffs around his wrists. Blood made his skin slippery. As the three men got closer, he wrenched one hand out of its metal bracelet. His thumb dislocated. He didn’t care; the physical pain was nothing compared to the ache of the gaping void behind his ribs. The gravity of his grief was causing him to implode, sucking up every shred of light and hope in the room. The space where Steve’s light had been was now a black hole growing in his heart. Soon, it would devour him from the inside out. 

Marks’ men realized what was happening a moment too late. By the time the goons had pulled their guns and fancy-suit-man had drawn a dagger, Danny was on top of them. 

Like a lone wolf tearing apart an entire herd of deer, he went for the weakest first. 

The hired thug on suit-man’s left let out a scream as Danny’s hand clenched tight around his wrist. Danny’ thumb pressed hard into the pressure point halfway up the forearm; the gun fell, spinning, toward the frost-kissed metal ground. Danny caught it. Wheeling around with his opponent’s body acting as a shield, he shot the second thug directly between the eyes. 

Suit-man dove for the dead man’s fallen weapon. Danny pressed his gun to the ribs of his human shield. Suit-man was back on his feet in an instant. Danny ducked down, gritting his teeth hard as four reports sounded in the close, frosty room. In his grip, the first goon stiffened, gasped, then went limp. Danny smelled blood, thick and metallic. He let the man fall. The two hired thugs lay sprawled on the ground. Crimson pools spread around their twisted, lifeless forms. 

Suit-man had just shot his colleague to get to Danny. Okay, so maybe Marks wasn’t the only criminally insane guy in this outfit. 

Danny straightened up so fast his head swam. He brushed a hand across his torso. Thankfully, his fingers came away dry. The body lying at his feet had saved him. None of the bullets had pierced his skin. 

Inhaling shakily, he raised his gun. He leveled it at suit-man’s forehead. 

His opponent, however, was much quicker. Suit-man already had Danny in his sights; as soon as the gun came up, suit-man fired. Danny’s gun spun out of his hands. It clattered away across the frigid metal floor, disappearing behind a stack of boxes. Danny stood for a moment in shock, waiting for the second shot to come. For it all to end. 

The shot didn’t come. 

Marks’ fancy accomplice grinned at Danny in the half-light of the freezer. He exhaled a hiss. Condensation hovered in the air between them like a specter. His gun was still raised, leveled at Danny’s chest. At his heart. 

_What’s the point of shooting me there?_ Danny wondered. His mind was hazy, his thoughts jumbled, like a pantry organized by a four-year-old. Marks and his team had already burned his heart. What was the point of filling it with lead? It was heavy enough already, the gravity pulling him apart from within. A collapsing star spinning, spinning, spinning toward destruction… 

“Listen,” said suit-man. “I’m going to put this aside.” He unloaded the gun. Tossed aside the clip. Dropped the empty shell, a declawed weapon, with a shivering _clang!_ “I’m not finished with you yet. I’m not going to make it that easy for either of us.” Suit-man lifted his dagger. It was long and well-polished, flashing in the dim blue light. An icicle tamed into a blade. “I’m going to give you one last chance to die like a man. In the heat of battle. For glory.” 

Danny didn’t care about glory. He didn’t care how he died. 

As long as he didn’t. Because no matter what happened now, _no matter what_ , he couldn’t let Steve go unavenged. He was going to find Marks. The collapsing star in his chest would draw them together, inevitably caught in each other’s orbit. Spinning closer and closer until they collided. And then… and then, Danny was going to rip Marks apart in every way he knew how. Heart, body, soul. 

The way Marks had destroyed him. 

Beginning with Marks’ team. Suit-man and his associates were as good a start as any. 

Danny circled his opponent. His right hand was soaked in blood. The cut on his wrist was deep, and hadn’t stopped bleeding. The cuffs dangled from his left wrist. Depending on the circumstance, that could either be an advantage or a hindrance. If he could get the chain around suit-man’s throat, the fight was as good as over. But if his opponent managed to catch hold of the loose cuff and pull him off balance… 

Suit-man watched him circle with a reptilian look of cold, calculating enjoyment. As Danny moved closer, he lifted the dagger, brandishing it in a show of strength. 

“You want this to be a fair fight?” Danny’s voice was a low rumble. Thunder warning of the approaching storm. “Put that knife down, and we’ll see how long you last. My bet’s on two minutes. Tops.” 

Suit-man smiled. “I don’t think so. You see, this isn’t about being fair. In fact, it isn’t about _you_ at all. This is for my entertainment. So I get a poisoned knife, and you get to fall on it.” He paused, cold, crystal eyes tracking Danny’s every move. “Before you die,” he said, matter-of-factly, as if this outcome was a foregone conclusion, “I want you to know the name of the man who is to kill you. I’m Allen Spender, Richard Marks’ third-in-command.” 

“I’ll remember that,” Danny shot back, “when I’m reading you and your poisoned knife your rights.” 

Allen Spender’s smile flickered slightly. Then he laughed. “Whatever you need to tell yourself,” he said, “to make it through the last miserable moments of your life.” 

Danny faked a lunge. Spender fell for it, slashing out at his momentarily exposed throat with expert precision. At the last moment, Danny backed off. The blade missed him by inches, leaving Spender in a graceful sort of half-fall. But despite his opponent’s momentary weakness, there was no way Danny was going to attack a guy with a knife with nothing but his bare hands. He’d been a cop long enough to know better. Knives were dangerous; more dangerous than guns in the right (or wrong) hands. So instead, he turned and dove back toward the boxes at the far side of the icebox. Away from Spender, away from the open door… 

Spender roared with fury when he realized what Danny was doing. But it was too late. 

Danny remerged with the second gun held in both hands. He aligned the sight with Spender’s chest, firing four times. Every shot hit his target dead-on. Center mass. _No way Spender’s fancy reptilian ass is getting up and walking that off,_ he thought. 

Spender collapsed with a gasp. His hands ghosted over his chest, one still clenched tight around his knife. And then his head fell back, his eyes rolled into his skull, and he went still and silent as a block of ice. 

With one bullet still in the chamber, Danny approached his fallen foe. He knelt, suppressing the shivers now wracking him from head to toe. The adrenaline pumping through his body combined with the freezing air to shake him apart. Reaching out, he pressed two fingers to the skin over Spender’s exposed carotid artery. 

Before he could register that _yes, there’s a pulse_!, Spender’s eyes flew open. Danny raised his gun, aiming for Spender’s head. He fired, but the shot went through Spender’s jaw and out his cheek, missing his brain. With a scream of gurgling agony, Spender seized Danny by the throat. Danny dropped the gun, stumbling and falling fully to his knees as he struggled to remove Spender’s (surprisingly strong) fingers from his windpipe. His vision blurred, the faded blues and whites of the cold-box spinning around him. He pried two of five fingers off. Spender’s grip was weakening. Good. It was almost over, _almost over…_

Danny broke the grip and fell backward, gasping. He lay beside one of the other corpses, staring up at the dull blue lights overhead. _Move,_ he told himself. _C’mon, just get up!_ But for some reason, he found that his muscles wouldn’t respond. A spike of panic shot through him. _What the fuck’s happening?!_

Spender was laughing. Or something close enough—with a mangled jaw, it would be hard to laugh for real, Danny thought. Raising his head the few inches that he could, Danny looked over at the dying man. Spender’s ravaged head was turned to one side. His eyes fixed on Danny, flashing with a last, sick look of triumph. 

And that’s when Danny felt the pain. Seated deep in his body, between his ribs and his hip. Searing his skin, pulsing through his veins, consuming him like a vicious, sudden sickness. Shaking so much he could barely move, he pressed one hand hesitantly to the origin of the pain. _Warm,_ his fuzzy mind supplied. _Too warm, too wet._

He shifted his hand, probing the painful area. His fingers brushed something hard. Unyielding. It took him a moment to realize what he was feeling. When he did, panic wrapped steel claws around his chest, squeezing tight. He couldn’t breathe. The world spun sickeningly. 

There, at the center of the growing, spreading red stain, was the protruding hilt of Spender’s poisoned blade. 


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Chapter Twelve**

Steve was apprehended at the door to his ocean-view suite by two security guards. He answered on the second knock, half-dressed with a half-empty bottle of champagne in one hand and his phone in the other. “Can I help you?” He made sure his voice cracked in all the right places. He coughed into his elbow, wincing intentionally. 

The guards exchanged a confused look. “You’re Commander McGarrett?” one asked. His tone betrayed his doubt.

Steve heaved a deep sigh. He rubbed his face against his forearm, playing tired and defeated. “What does Marks want from me now?” He brought the bottle of champagne to his mouth. He pretended to take a long drink from it, wiping his lips. “My mission is blown to hell. Marks is in control, I get it. Are you here to gloat, or what?”

The guards glanced at each other again. Steve read the messages flickering between them like signals down a wire. Confusion turned to relief, then amusement. “Huh,” said the first guard. “Guess we thought you’d be…” he hesitated, as if looking for the perfect descriptor, “…more intimidating.”

The second guard laughed. “Hey, the guy knows when he’s beat.” He grinned at Steve. His mocking expression matched his tone. “What a sight to see: big tough Navy SEAL with his tail between his legs. Our boss knows how to whip ‘em, doesn’t he, Rodgers?” The guard nudged his partner, who chuckled.

Steve shook his head, glowering. He made as if to slam the door in their faces. 

Rodgers stopped the door with his booted foot. “Oh, no, you don’t! Marks wants you kept under constant surveillance until we reach our destination. Of course, we can’t have you disappearing off the face of the earth, or we _know_ your team back on the islands will get suspicious. So you get to live, for now. You’ll check in with your Honolulu headquarters as soon as we get a cell signal, and tell them everything is just peachy. Or whatever bullshit you need to spew to get them to believe you.”

Steve paused, considering. His hand clenched around the champagne. In his mind’s eye, he took out the first guard with the hard, double-thick base of the bottle, leaving him either concussed or dead. His gaze moved to the second guard; he imagined getting his arms around the man’s throat, squeezing like a python so that his opponent couldn’t scream, then snapping the guard’s neck with one sharp twist. Like uncorking a bottle in fast motion. 

As much as he’d love to drop these guys on the spot and get out from under Marks’ thumb, Steve knew he couldn’t risk it. Marks had Danny locked away somewhere on the ship. Until Steve knew where his partner was (and what condition he was in), he didn’t dare risk antagonizing Marks or any of his accomplices. 

“C’mon.” Rodgers reached out and grabbed Steve by the wrist. “You’re coming with us.”

Steve pulled away with a sharp, “Whoa, hey!” He slid his phone into his spa robe pocket. Stepping out of the room, he slammed the door behind him. “Hands off. I told your boss, and I’ll tell you: I’m not gonna try anything. You have my partner, and a whole ship full of hostages. I’m not stupid.”

The guards exchanged another loaded glance. “All right,” said Rodgers, looking slightly skeptical. His partner shrugged. “If you try anything, though, I’ll probably just shoot you. Fair warning.”

_So they’re armed._ Steve’s eyes flickered over the guards’ bodies. He’d noticed the taser attached to their belts, but now he saw the (very faint) tell-tale creases beneath their loose-fitting uniforms that betrayed the locations of their concealed weapons. _Good._

The two guards led Steve back to the elevator. “We’re headed up to the Crow’s Nest,” Rodgers announced. “Marks is up there having a drink with his lady friend. I’m gonna bring you to him so that you and him can have a nice little chat about the way things are gonna be from now on.”

“Crow’s Nest,” Steve echoed. “Yeah, okay.” He gestured at his robe-clad form. “They gonna let me go up in just this?”

Rogers shrugged. “It’s a cruise ship. You can wear a swim suit for all they fuckin’ care.”

Steve hid his triumph behind a fake-nervous smile. “Good. Great. But uh, first, and I’m really sorry about this, guys, I’m gonna need the bathroom.”

Rodgers and his partner glanced at each other. Steve read their hesitation like an open letter: _Is it a trap? I don’t know. Maybe?_

“Fine,” Rodgers snapped after a tense moment of contemplation. “There’s a restroom right outside the Crow’s Nest. You can use that one.”

Steve nodded. It wasn’t ideal, but it’d have to do.

The elevator reached the topmost floor of the ship, grinding to a halt. Rodgers led the way. His partner nudged Steve in the back, forcing him out next. The doors slid shut with a sliding gasp.

Steve made his way into the bathroom without a second glance back at his escorts. The room was blessedly empty. Pulling off his robe, he unwrapped the colorful tourist-esque t-shirt, dark sunglasses, spray tan, hair gel (Danny’s that he’d taken from their suite bathroom), and shorts he’d been hiding in vacuum-compressed packets beneath his robe. He had the disguise on in ten seconds flat. He’d practiced several times back in the ocean-view suite, making absolutely sure he had the process down to an art. 

Because right now, time was of the essence. If he was going to pull this off, he’d have to move fast.

He walked back out of the bathroom a bare fifteen seconds after entering. His face felt like a mask beneath the layer of fake tan he’d applied. The shaded glasses hid his eyes, the gel pulling his hair up into crests like storm surges. He’d glanced at himself in the mirror; he doubted his own mother would recognize him. (Well, maybe that expression didn’t work quite so well in his case; Doris would probably call his bullshit in a fraction of the time it’d taken him to get the disguise on. But that wasn’t the point.)

Rodgers and his partner certainly didn’t know him, though. They barely spared a second glance as he sidled by, flashing them a bright, happy-go-lucky grin as he closed the bathroom door. The guards crossed their arms, purposefully ignoring him. After all, no one could change their appearance _that much_ in just fifteen seconds, right? The thought probably hadn’t even crossed their minds.

Steve made his way out into the Crow’s Nest. Past swinging glass doors inlaid with two enormous golden letters in sprawling cursive: _CN._ Once inside, he approached a group of passengers dressed similarly to himself. He stood near them, not close enough to draw their attention, but close enough to blend in. 

He spotted Marks and MacRah across the room. They sat together at the bar, stools swiveled so that they faced the crowd and the ocean-view window. Marks kept glancing at the hallway leading into the room. Keeping an eye on the exit, or keeping an eye out for the return of his two guards and their prisoner. Maybe both.

Satisfied that he’d sorted out who was who in the room, Steve loudly (and drunkenly) declared to someone he’d never met (a man in an offensively bright-orange Hawaiian t-shirt and the ugliest swim shorts imaginable) that he needed to use the bathroom, and would be back in a bit. Just in case Marks was watching for any suspicious activity, he’d have a good excuse to walk back out just moments after entering the room.

Back past the inlaid glass doors, Steve’s two guards were arguing in hushed voices.

“It’s been more than two minutes, Rodgers! No one takes that long to piss.”

“He’s probably drunk as shit,” Rodgers’ partner replied scathingly. “I doubt he can even find the toilet.”

“Let’s go check on him.”

“Be my guest, dude. If you wanna creep on a full-grown drunk guy in a public urinal, that’s up to you.”

Steve observed from the shadows as Rodgers glanced around, and then entered the bathroom. With a long-suffering sigh, his partner followed. 

A few moments of silence passed. And then a groan and a sharp cry of outrage floated out of the bathroom. _Good,_ he thought. They’d taken the bait, by the sound of it.

“He _can’t_ have gotten out that way!” Rodgers’ voice was raised in fury. “The drains are a dead end. They just lead to the sewage tank!” 

His partner replied in a more hushed (but still clearly audible) tone. “Listen, dude, Marks will literally fucking _kill us_ if he finds out we lost his prisoner. Especially like this.”

“Then we don’t tell him. Look, that’s a whole lot of blood right there on that drain hatch. And there’s his fucking robe, right down there in that pit of gunk! The guy was drunk as shit. I don’t care if he’s some famous Navy SEAL or whatever. He’s not gonna make it anywhere through the pipes. If he doesn’t literally choke on shit and piss, he’ll probably bleed out or something. Looks like he cut himself good. And on top of it all, he left the robe, so he’s naked. Yeah, he’s not gonna be any trouble.”

Steve allowed himself a moment of fleeting amusement. He pressed one hand to the shallow (but perfectly-placed) cut just he’d made just above his hip. It’d bled enough to be convincing; the shard of champagne bottle he’d used had been a surprisingly surgical (and sterile) tool. He’d made sure the slight injury wouldn’t slow him down at all; the press-on bandage and a little alcohol (acting as a temporary disinfectant) were taking care of it for now. He’d pulled the whole thing off so fast, there was no way in heaven or hell that these two idiot guards would ever believe he’d tricked them.

The guards reemerged. They made for the Crow’s Nest, still talking in urgent, hushed voices. “We’ll tell the boss that McGarrett passed out from drinking in his suite and can’t make it up here to meet. I mean, think about it: it’s not even half a lie. The guy was getting wasted when we went down there, right? Another half-hour and we wouldn’t even need to make up an excuse.”

Rodgers nodded. “Yeah, okay. Good plan.” He opened the glass doors, letting his partner go through first. The last thing Steve heard before the guards disappeared into the colorful throng of whale watchers and cocktail enthusiasts was, “We’ll tell him we put someone else on security detail. Anyone you hate that you wanna get in trouble?” 

Followed by Rodgers’ partner laughed. “Hell yeah, buddy. I got a few names to give the boss if he wants to make an example of someone…” The double glass doors swung shut with an air of finality.

Steve slipped out of the shadows and headed for the stairs. After all, Marks’ men were probably watching the elevator security cameras. He couldn’t risk it. Even in disguise, avoiding the cameras was a priority. 

But not his _first_ priority. Right now, _that_ was to get Marks and his team out of the Crow’s Nest, and down into the bowls of the ship. Anywhere where they wouldn’t be able to see out any windows. 

If he managed to pull this off, they’d be safe in no time. 

If he didn’t, he’d escalate an already tense and deadly situation into an all-out war.

Wrenching open the door to the stairwell, he headed for the upmost deck.

. . . . . .

Steve emerged into the howling wind. The ocean writhed eight floors below, spreading to the horizon in every direction like blueberry jam spread on an endless bagel. Waves like dolphins leapt and crested, slapping the ship’s barnacled flanks. The upmost deck was bare, empty. A few Adirondack chairs lined the port and starboard railings. A lone life preserver hung from a hook at the front end of the deck.

Steve ducked into the wind. He moved to the front of the deck, directly over the Crow’s Nest. Due to the configuration of the ship (which he had memorized earlier in the mission) this meant he was directly above the bridge, as well. If he had correctly guessed Marks’ plan, the top officers under his control would be gathered in the bridge, where someone (or multiple someones, most likely) could keep a close eye on them. Which meant that, as long as Marks and the bridge crew couldn’t see what he was doing, Steve’s secret plan would remain secret.

Steve looked down over the starboard side of the ship. He reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. Scrolling through his apps, he found the one he was looking for. He loaded it, finger hovering over the digital button labeled _FIRE._ Taking a deep breath, he tapped the button seven times in rapid succession. 

With a startling loud _BOOM_!, an explosion shattered the window in his and Danny’s ocean-view suite far below. Smoke curled like black and silver hawks’ talons from the ash-encrusted hole in the side of the ship. Since their suite was on the second floor, the spray from the ocean rose up, periodically inundating the smoking room, preventing the fire from spreading. Steve let out a breath of relief. The remote-trigger explosive he’d set up, while unstable and unpredictable, had done its job. And now the ocean was doing its part as well.

In an instant, all the ships’ fire alarms were blaring. Steve leaned down over the prow railing again, watching the Crow’s Nest empty through the narrow front-facing window. Marks and his team would leave at once to find out what had happened, most likely. And when they did, they’d find a body (or enough pieces of what _seemed_ to be a body) and enough burnt chunks of Styrofoam to figure out what had happened. He could almost hear Marks explaining the situation to his associates now: _Steve McGarrett, the legendary head of the Five-0 task force, has finally met his match. In his efforts to take down an infamous drug lord—yours truly—and take control of a hostage crisis, he built a bomb so unsteady it blew him up in his room…_

And then the guards who’d been sent to escort him would open up and tell Marks about the situation in the Crow’s Nest bathroom, about the blood and the robe and the champagne. The pieces would come together like a perfectly-cut puzzle. They’d tell Marks how Steve had escaped through the drainage pipe, how he’d managed to get back to his room, where he planned to build a bomb to take Marks and his team out. They’d conclude that the weapon detonated early, taking Steve out in a super-heated blast…

And after that, hopefully Marks wouldn’t ask any more questions. There was no reason for him to; not when all the answers were right there, clear as tropical water on a sunny day.

Inhaling deeply, Steve closed his eyes for the briefest of moments. He reminded himself that, while he had just won a lot of points, he hadn’t won the game. If he wanted to keep his lead, he’d have to stay focused on his goals: _taking out Marks, freeing the passenger-hostages, finding and saving Danny…_

Moving to the back of the dock, Steve knelt beside what appeared to be a maintenance hatch. He knew better, though: this hatch was for storing emergency supplies and tools. He pulled out a first-aid kit, then a couple of life jackets. After a few seconds, he found what he was looking for: a red SOS flare rocket. With Marks monitoring all radio frequencies, and with no cell signal, there was no viable way of getting out a verbal SOS call without alerting the bad guys. However, a _visual_ SOS was still an option. Because, unless any of his minions saw the flare go off, Marks would never be the wiser. There was no way to track or monitor the detonation of emergency flares.

Steve straightened up. He replaced the lifejackets, setting aside the first-aid kit—something told him he’d need that sooner or later.

Steve lit the flare. He held up the launcher, pointing it skyward. The farther up he could get it to go, the better chance they had of being noticed by some distant, passing ship. At this angle, no one in the bridge or Crow’s Nest (or anyone but those standing on the promenade decks, for that matter) would be able to see the flare. And with all the chaos going on inside the ship (the fire alarm was still blaring loudly and the ocean view suite on the second floor continued to smoke heavily), no one was likely to see or hear the signal anyway.

The flare went up with a loud hiss. It climbed up, up, into the eggshell-blue sky. In a shower of red sparks, it exploded, spreading a clear message for all ships to see: _SOS! We’re in trouble! Send help!_

The flare finished detonating. The wind carried away the flakes of red ash. Steve wasted no time closing the emergency supplies hatch, making sure everything looked the same as when he’d found it. Ghosts didn’t leave tracks.

Steve knew how to fight like a hundred men. He knew how to strategize, size up his opponents, then slip through the cracks in their armor and rip them apart pieces by piece from the inside out. But right now, fighting just wasn’t an option. Too much was at stake. So instead, he would send out this silent distress call, and then disappear. Hidden in plain sight, corroding Marks’ operation like the steady fall of water on unyielding stone.

Marks wouldn’t see the end coming until it was too late. And when that moment came, Steve made an oath to himself that the devious drug lord would feel every inch of the fear and desperation Steve had felt watching Danny walk away from that stage.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Chapter Thirteen**

Danny slipped into unconsciousness slowly, like a coin falling into a vat of thick syrup. One moment he was staring at the freezer room’s dull overhead lights; the next he was surrounded by a surprisingly warm cloak of darkness. The more he slipped, the harder breathing became. Every inhale sent a wave of nearly unbearable pain through his side. Every exhale felt like defeat. 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there. He couldn’t feel his legs. In fact, his entire lower half was numb. Only the wound itself hurt, throbbing dully. What good was shock, he thought, his mind sinking into the welcoming blankness, if it couldn’t even give him relief from the pain? And then he realized that no, it wasn’t the shock that was numbing his body, creeping through his veins like ice. It was whatever Spender had put on his blade. He’d been poisoned. Right.

_Stabbed, poisoned, and freezing to death._ Danny blinked against the blackness falling like a shroud over his eyes. _Establishing an exact COD might take some doing._

But no, he couldn’t think like that. Even if Steve was gone, really and truly (and Danny wasn’t quite sure he believed that, because _how_? There was no fucking way some ragtag gang of slime-bag criminals like Marks and his men could take out Steven Fucking McGarrett, no matter how good they were), he had to make it off the ship and back to Honolulu. Back to his kids, to his son and daughter who were waiting for him. He couldn’t give in. Couldn’t give up…

Lifting his head took more energy than running a marathon. The numbness in his lower half held him down. It felt like someone very strong was sitting on his legs, keeping him from moving. Pain shot up his side as the blade slid inside him; he fell back, gasping. The room spun around him. He exhaled slowly. His breath rose in whirling fragments of mist, spinning away from his lips and clouding the already dim glow of the overheads.

Another minute passed. Or maybe it was an hour, a day, a year. It didn’t matter. Danny couldn’t move, _couldn’t_ , and unless some kitchen staff or crewmember happened to stumble down to the freezer anytime soon (unlikely), he was completely and utterly fucked.

He was sinking back toward the beckoning relief of unconsciousness when he heard someone swear loudly nearby. At first, in his disoriented state, he couldn’t tell who it was or where the sound had come from. But then someone familiar was saying his name; hands were on his chest, palms against his collarbones and fingers curling around his shoulders. “Danny!” The voice was desperate, rough, pained. “Danny! _Danny_ , no, no, no…”

_Steve?_ Danny inhaled shakily. _Steve!_ He flinched, gritting his teeth as agony raced white-hot through his torso. His eyes opened, but remained obscured by the strange gray mist invading his mind. He couldn’t make out anything but faint shapes in the oppressive gloom, moving against the light. Fighting hard, he willed his vision to clear. For the impending darkness to lift. Because if Steve was there, if he was alive… well, Danny wanted to make goddamn sure that he got one last good look (at least) before he either a.) passed out from shock or b.) died of the combined effects of poisoning, blood loss, and hypothermia. (He really, really wanted to go with option a, but since he wasn’t a doctor, he couldn’t say for sure how things would turn out.)

Steve’s face came into focus. Danny blinked off the thick, heavy blankness behind his eyes. He tried to smile, but moving anything—even his facial muscles—took too much effort. He held his breath and took Steve in. 

“Danny,” Steve said. His voice was ragged as a mountain range. His eyes were wild, panicked. Clearly, the situation was as shitty as Danny had originally assessed. 

Well, _almost_ as shitty. Because Steve was there now, and that made everything so much better.

Danny forced himself to breathe in. He was relieved that he hadn’t tasted blood yet—he’d avoided taking damage to the digestive or respiratory tracts, at least. However, if the poison on the knife was of the fast and deadly variety (which, knowing Marks and his men, it no doubt was), that was a moot point.

Steve cradled the back of Danny’s head in one hand, the other on Danny’s cheek. His fingers traced Danny’s spine, from the base of his skull to the lowest accessible point between his shoulder blades. Danny watched Steve’s face. He was clearly checking for spinal cord injuries, and (thankfully) didn’t seem to be finding any.

“Hey, Steve,” Danny managed to get out. The two words hurt like a thousand knives in his side. Or just one---that’s all it took, anyway. “I was stabbed, not thrown through a window.” As long as the blade hadn’t gone all the way through to his back, his spine should be fine.

“Hey, hey, Danny, don’t talk. The knife’s in pretty deep, buddy; if you move around too much, it could hit something vital.”

Danny wanted to laugh. He was pretty sure that, damaged vitals or not, he was already in some deep shit. “Poison,” he jerked his chin toward the knife’s protruding hilt. His voice was a gravel backroad, filled with unexpected dips and rough spots. “Steve, it’s poisoned.” _I’ve been poisoned._

Fresh panic lit up Steve’s eyes. He clenched his jaw, veins in his neck standing out. He swore in an undertone, lowering his head for a moment as he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. “Yeah, okay. I’m not gonna lie; that’s not good for us.”

Danny wanted to say _congratulations, Steve, you just won epic understatement of the year_ , but his lungs wouldn’t inflate, and breathing was hard enough without trying to make words work.

“It’s bad, yeah, but listen, Danny, listen to me. I’m gonna get you outta here, all right?” Steve’s hand was back on Danny’s face. The touch was so warm and soft Danny wanted to cry. Suddenly, he was violently aware of how cold he was. Even with the numbing effects of the poison, the ice of the freezer room was sinking into his bones. But as the poison spread, numbing and paralyzing his muscles, he couldn’t even shiver.

“Yeah, okay,” Danny whispered. His voice was almost gone, along with most of the oxygen in his lungs. Vaguely, through the returning bleariness of the fog in his head, he wondered how long it would take for the toxin paralyze his lungs. Because when that happened—and it would, not doubt—all bets were off.

Steve moved out of Danny’s sight. Danny tried not to panic because _what if that was a hallucination and Steve’s really dead and I’m all alone in here and there’s no one around to help me…_

“Danny, which of these guys stabbed you?” Steve’s voice was a dangerous growl, jerking Danny out of his panic-fueled mental spiral. In that moment, before common sense kicked in, Danny was ninety-percent sure that his partner was about to desecrate a corpse. 

And then he realized: “Right. Antidote.” Danny managed two more words: a herculean effort. It wouldn’t make sense if the guy carrying a poisoned knife didn’t have an antidote on him. _Good thinking, Steve._ With a tremendous effort, Danny lifted his head just enough to indicate Spender’s limp, bloody form. “That one.”

Steve knelt beside Spender’s body. “You really did a number on him, pal,” he said. There was a dark mix of pride and satisfaction in his voice. 

_Good,_ Danny thought. He let his head fall back against the freezing floor. “Steve, you mind getting me…?” His voice gave out before he could finish his sentence: … _Out of here?_ He tried again, but not even a whisper came out. Okay, so that was so totally not a good sign. Being optimistic, he only had half a minute—maybe less—before his lungs gave out the way his vocal cords just had.

Steve straightened up. Danny saw the blurry outline of his partner’s upper torso and head as he stood over Spender’s body, partially obscuring the overhead lights. “Sorry, Danno, but I have to keep you here. You’re actually lucky you’re in a freezer. The cold should slow your metabolism down, meaning the poison will take longer to act, and you’ll take longer to bleed out.”

_Yeah, I’m such a lucky guy, Steven._ Danny’s eyes slid shut. Between the pulsing pain in his side and the way his thoughts were tripping all over each other, he felt like a coin dropped in an endless well. Falling forever through half-frozen water, watching the light above grow fainter and fainter…

“Found it!” The triumph in Steve’s voice surprised Danny into opening his eyes. He groaned, upset that his moment of zen had been ruined. His partner had flipped Spender’s body over with his foot and torn apart the guy’s fancy suit with a pocket knife. Typical. But at least it seemed as if Steve’s less-than-civil behavior had yielded the desired result: in Steve’s hand was a tiny amber bottle of clear liquid.

Before Danny could even think of a snarky response (not that he’d be able to voice it anyway, but it was a good mental exercise) Steve was back beside Danny, kneeling on the metal floor. “There’s no needle; I can’t inject it,” Steve was saying. “You’ll have to drink it, Danny.”

_If I could swallow, I’d love to._ Danny tried to convey the sentiment by rolling his eyes at the ceiling. 

Steve seemed to get the point. He was silent for a split second. Danny could almost hear the gears working in his brain, likely churning through a minefield of bad ideas. “I’m gonna pour it down your throat,” Steve announced, and already, this sounded like a stupid plan in the making. “And then I’m gonna have to breathe for you until the toxin is neutralized. You can’t breathe in when I’m giving you the antidote; if you do, your lungs might close off, and you could die.”

_Oh, only that?_ Danny thought sarcastically. _Just a medium-to-high chance of death? Then what are we waiting for?_ Another eyeroll, followed by the slightest up-down jerk of his head: exasperation and acceptance at the same time.

Slowly, slowly, Steve propped Danny halfway up. Just enough that the lower half of his body—the part currently housing a dagger—wasn’t jostled too much. Steve knelt behind Danny, one arm lying protectively across his torso and the other holding up the amber bottle. Carefully, Steve tilted Danny’s head back, clearing his partner’s airways and providing the best direct access from mouth to stomach. Like a scientist pouring a corrosive acid into a narrow glass tube, Steve carefully tipped the little bottle. The clear liquid slid down Danny’s half-paralyzed throat, cold and slick and smooth. Danny wanted to cough, to gag, but the muscles responsible for such actions were as frozen as the rest of him. Thankfully, in this case, as Danny’s utter lack of movement allowed Steve more precision in his delicate task, and kept him from inhaling anything.

Once all the antidote was down, Steve carefully laid Danny back on the cold, hard ground. Danny could taste the antidote on his tongue: like a weird mix of vodka and lemon Oreos. _Huh. Not bad._

“All right, Danny, it’s done. In a few minutes, you’ll be fine.”

Danny was pretty sure that statement was about to win Steve the ‘second biggest understatement of the year’ award as well, but hey. The optimism (as obviously fake as it was) was still appreciated. 

Danny tried to breathe in, and found that he couldn’t. A fresh wave of panic washed over him. As the toxin coursed through his body, he’d found that his mind was almost as numb as his limbs; somewhere along the way, he’d stopped caring so much about what happened to him. Hell, he wasn’t anywhere _close_ to as ecstatic as he should’ve been that _Steve was alive, he’s alive! He’s here with me and he’s alive!_ But as the antidote began to work (slowly, slowly), feeling—both the mental and the physical—rushed back in full force. 

“Danny, hey, Danny, it’s gonna be okay.” Steve seemed to have sensed Danny’s panic, and clearly understood the source of it. Steve moved so that he was kneeling with one knee on either side of Danny’s ribcage. “I’m gonna breathe for you, buddy, so just relax. I’ve done this before, so just let me handle it, okay?”

Danny was pretty sure he couldn’t stop anyone from doing anything (even his own goddamn body from shutting down like an overheated computer), but since he couldn’t move, he also couldn’t point this out to Steve. So he lay there, limp and motionless, as Steve cupped his jaw with both hands (stabilizing his head and opening his airways, his rational mind supplied, but it felt like the beginning of something much nicer than that) and pressed their mouths together. 

The last thing Danny remembered before the lack of oxygen finally forced his brain to shut down was the determination in Steve’s eyes as his partner breathed for them both.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Chapter Fourteen**

It took Steve ten minutes to get Danny breathing on his own again. Once the poison was neutralized, Steve could focus on the next most pressing issue: the knife wound itself. He knew that, if he removed the blade, he risked damaging Danny’s vital organs. And then there was the matter of excessive bleeding—both internal and external. Through the rest of ordeal, Danny remained unconscious, his heartbeat erratic but not (yet) in the danger zone.

The deciding factor was the cold. If they stayed in the freezer, Danny would eventually die of shock and/or hypothermia. Taking the knife out was risky, but Steve had no choice. He could take the knife out and maybe lose Danny, or leave it in, and lose him for sure.

Luckily, Steve managed to get the blade out without waking Danny up (which would’ve been a disaster—if Danny panicked, he’d bleed out a lot faster), or nicking any veins or arteries. He knew this because, if he had, there would’ve been a whole lot more blood. Not that there wasn’t a lot anyway. Steve pressed a thick, padded stick-on bandage to his partner’s wound, temporarily sealing it. He wiped his forehead against his forearm. Despite the cold, he was sweating profusely. The stress of the situation was driving him crazy.

Steve was half in shock himself. He still couldn’t believe everything that had happened since the incident in the theater. After sending up the flare, he’d found a radio and tuned it to listen in to Marks’ communication channels. As he’d expected, they’d taken the bait: they believed Steve had blown himself up in a heavy-handed attempt to build a homemade bomb in his stateroom. 

After confirming that his plan had worked, he’d known the next order of business was finding Danny. But because he couldn’t show his face in front of any of the ship’s many cameras (even in disguise—Marks was too clever, and too suspicious and paranoid, not to use face-rec software to analyze the footage, Steve assumed), he’d had to locate his partner without coming out of hiding. Which turned out to be a lot easier than he’d expected; at the time Steve was listening in to Marks’ radio channels, Kate MacRah was attempting to locate a man named Spender—one of Marks’ top bodyguards, who seemed to be MIA. When Steve heard that one of Marks’ most trusted associates (at least according to the dossier Steve had received pre-mission detailing the entirety of Marks’ known crew and operational standards) wasn’t answering his radio, Steve knew at once it had something to do with Danny. Call it intuition, call it luck, but somehow, he’d _known._

After that, it was a not-so-simple matter of figuring out where Danny was. Which turned out to be a lot easier than expected—all Steve had had to do was listen long enough, and eventually someone gave it away: “ _Hey, MacRah. Don’t worry about Spender anymore; I’m gonna head down to the freezer and kick his ass right now_.” 

Before Marks’ thugs could get halfway to their destination, Steve had homed in on their radio signals, rappelled down the side of the ship, and re-entered the lower deck through the blown-out window of his stateroom. He was there when the guards arrived; he dropped them swiftly and silently. Stashing their unconscious, bound bodies in the freezer cooling system, he left their radios on static.

If he’d known what Spender and Marks’ other men had done to Danny, he wouldn’t have left them breathing.

When he first saw his partner’s body lying, motionless and bloody, on the frost-sheathed metal floor of the freezer, Steve’s heart had stopped. Not figuratively, but literally. For a moment, everything had stood still. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. He’d thought he’d never move again, held in place by his fear, a thousand _what-ifs_ chasing each other through his mind like angry wasps.

And then, by some miracle, he’d broken free and entered the freezer. He’d knelt by Danny’s side, desperately calling his partner’s name, over and over until his throat was raw and his eyes stung with unshed tears. And then Danny had opened his eyes, and Steve was sure he’d never felt more powerful relief in his entire life. After that, it was all a panicked blur. While, externally, Steve had maintained his practiced calm (for Danny’s sake, and for his own), internally, he was a mess. He’d almost lost Danny. He could’ve lost him. He could _still_ lose him.

Steve shoved that last thought aside with vicious intent. He was snapped back to the present by a shock of overwhelming fear. _No._ There was no way in hell he was letting Danny die. Not now, not ever. Until he was in the grave himself, Steve knew for a fact that he would never stop fighting for the man he loved. So he kept pressure on the wound until the bandage stuck tight to Danny’s skin, already tinged with red, and tucked the bloodied knife into a plastic bag. He stowed the weapon in the first aid kit, _Just in case._ If the poison was still affecting Danny, or if it had lasting side effects, they’d need a sample of the toxin to show a doctor.

Steve knew he couldn’t safely move Danny without risking internal bleeding. Which could already be a problem, but would be exacerbated by jostling of any kind. That was going to be an issue.

Thankfully, since they were in a freezer, it was easy to find a transport cart. This Steve used as a sort of stretcher. With the utmost care, he lifted Danny’s limp body onto the cart. He arranged him as comfortably as possible. After that, it was a simple matter of undressing one of Spender’s two associates (the one with the least amount of blood on his security uniform) and switching disguises. At least that way, if Steve accidentally got caught on tape, Marks wouldn’t immediately know who he was.

While listening in to Marks’ men, Steve had also discovered where the cocaine was being stored. It was, in fact, in the morgue—Marks hadn’t been messing with them on that footage of the Neptune Suite, he’d been serious. But he’d also been cocky. Too sure that his plan was infallible, or that he could handle any problems that came up…

Well, Marks was wrong. There was no handling what Steve had planned for him. Because, while Steve had many shortcomings (especially when it came to things like manners, paying the dinner bill, and avoiding dangerous situations and people), he sure as hell knew how to take out hostiles at sea. That was pretty much his job description. 

Hostages or no hostages, Marks was going down. For what Spender and his thugs had done to Danny. For what Marks had done to everyone in that theater, from the announcer he’d shot, to the tourists and vacationers he’d traumatized for life. 

There was no way Steve was letting that scumbag leave the _MS Andromeda_ alive.

. . . . . .

After disabling the elevator cameras, Steve wheeled the freezer cart inside. It took him five minutes to reach the medical room with Danny’s too-still body. Surprisingly, Marks didn’t have anyone watching the lower decks. But then again, since Marks thought all threats had been eliminated (and since Steve had cleaned up the bloody mess in the cold storage box, leaving no trace of the fight and consequent escape of Marks’ star hostage), it was unlikely he’d up security any time soon.

The medical staff were shocked and terrified when Steve entered the room. He could see why—his security uniform was too tight, obviously stolen, and stained with spots of blood from a close-range gunshot wound. Thankfully, since medical emergencies aboard the ship were considered confidential and private, there were no cameras in the sick rooms. Steve explained in short, quick sentences who he was, who Danny was, and what they were doing on the ship. He asked the paramedics, who immediately rushed to his partner’s side, to look after Danny, and not to leave the room under any circumstances.

“Where are you going?” one of the nurses asked, eyes wide and face pinched with fear. “Aren’t you hurt?”

Steve shook his head. “No, ma’am.” He indicated the spots of blood. “The suit came this way. Second-hand.”

She raised an eyebrow. Tried for a smile. “You should get it tailored. It’s a bit small around the shoulders. Other than that, you look the part.”

Steve smiled back. But he couldn’t keep it up for long. Swallowing hard, he said, voice rough with emotion, “Don’t let anything else happen to my partner. All right? Lock this door behind you, and don’t open it for anyone. Not even me. Not until I give you the all-clear code.”

“Which is…?”

Steve wrote a random series of eleven numbers on the nearest clipboard. He handed it to the nurse. “If you hear that sequence in reverse order being broadcasted over the all-ship intercom, that means all hostiles have been neutralized and I’ve taken control of the vessel. Until then, _stay here._ I’m serious. Those people out there, they won’t hesitate to kill you all if they find out you’re helping us.”

She nodded. Lifting her chin, trying to be strong. She was young—maybe in her early thirties, tops. “All right, Commander. My team and I will take good care of your partner. You have my word.”

Steve smiled again. “Mahalo.” 

He looked over at Danny, now lying on a metal table, surrounded by anxious but determined paramedics and nurses. His partner was barely visible behind the frantic medical professionals. Turning away, he took a deep, steadying breath. Pulling open the heavy metal door, he stepped out into the hallway. He spared one last lingering glance over his shoulder at Danny. Anger rose inside him, red-hot and frothing as a river of lava running into the roiling waters of the ocean. His righteous fury hardened inside him. Shards of anguish and fear transformed into vengeful rage. He clenched his fists. Exhaled slowly through his nose.

He knew what he had to do. To end this. To win.

Closing the door to the medical center behind him, he headed back toward the elevator. 

He was going to need guns. Lots and lots of guns.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Chapter Fifteen**

Danny woke up in the dark. He could smell alcohol—the pure, strong kind used in hospitals—and old blood. Or maybe not that old. In his disoriented state, he couldn’t tell for sure.

He tried to speak. His throat was raw, rough. Sore. He felt as if someone had reached down his throat and curled their fingers, scraping long, sharp nails all the way up his trachea and along his tongue. He turned over, coughing. That was a mistake. Pain shot up his side, branching out through his entire body like a tree growing in fast motion. Branches of agony crawled up his limbs, vines twisting around his head and squeezing until he couldn’t think. He fell back against the hard, unyielding surface under his body, and tried not to move at all. He held his breath, clenching his jaw as the pain raced through him like electricity. 

After a few minutes, the pain passed. He was left staring up into the darkness, covered in sweat. He’d begun to realize that it wasn’t so much that the room was dark, as that his vision was only half working. And that’s when he rememebered: _the poison. The knife wound. Steve!_

He sat straight up. Gritting his teeth against the inevitable (but this time expected) burst of pain, he swung his legs out over the side of the metal table he’d been lying on. He blinked, trying and failing to adjust to the dim light of the room. Everything was blank white, or silver and metallic. The table, the solitary chair, the upright stand holding a bag of clear liquid. Danny followed the little tubes leading down from that bag, and realized they were attached to his body. Grimacing, he pulled the needles out of his hands with shaking fingers. It stung a bit, but was nothing compared to the relentless, throbbing ache in his side. He pressed a hand to the bandage pad over his wound. He did his best not to think about how much walking was going to hurt.

As he took his first shaky steps away from the table, he had another revelation: he wasn’t full dressed. Someone had cut away his shirt. The blood had been cleaned off, but apparently his shirt hadn’t made it. At least he still had his pants, though. Finding a shirt would be a lot easier than scoring a whole new outfit. Especially given his practically fugitive status… 

He tried to open the door to his room. It wouldn’t budge. Frustrated, he slammed his hand, palm open, against the metal a few times. He flinched at the resulting sound. It was like thunder in a narrow valley, echoing against the bare, lifeless walls. “Hey!” His voice was like rocks in a blender. He cleared his throat, grimacing at the shock of pain that caused. “Hey! Somebody let me outta here!” _I have to find my partner,_ he wanted to say. But he wasn’t sure how he’d gotten to this clean, disinfected room. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what had happened after he’d killed Spender. He thought Steve had been there, holding him, saying his name…

He slammed his hands, now closed into fists, against the sheet of metal between him and the rest of the world. Every motion hurt his side. Every breath was another stab deep into his body. But he couldn’t stop, because ~~Steve might be dead~~ Steve might be in trouble. Even if Danny hadn’t hallucinated his partner coming to save him, who knows what had happened between the fight in the freezer and now? Marks was cunning. Cunning, and desperate. A cornered animal, deadly and afraid. 

There was no telling what Marks might do if he found out Danny had escaped.

If Danny even _had_ escaped.

And that was the thought that did it. _I have to get out of here!_ Danny’s mind was wild with desperation. A drumbeat inside his chest, scraping at the inside of his head. _No matter what, I have to get out, right now!_ He had to get out, to find out if Steve was safe. To find out if ~~his partner~~ the man he loved was alive.

Because if he wasn’t, what was the point?

_Seven billion people on this planet, and I had to go and fall in love with you._ That’s what Danny had said, when he’d finally told Steve how he felt. How he’d always felt, and not even known it.

Seven billion people on the planet, and no one in the history of humanity would suffer like Marks would suffer if Danny found out that Steve was dead for real.

. . . . . .

Danny wasn’t quite sure what it was. Maybe it was whatever had been on that knife, or maybe whoever had dragged him into sick bay (which was where he was, he quickly figured out) had dosed him with something. Maybe it was the blood loss, or the wound itself. Whatever. All Danny knew was that, after he used a fire extinguisher to break the lock on the door from the inside, he found that he wasn’t as steady or clear-headed as he’d thought.

He stumbled out into the hall, and was immediately accosted by a couple of nurses and a desperate-looking doctor. They were saying things in loud, shocked voices, gesturing and shaking their heads as he tried to push past them. He couldn’t understand what they were saying. It all sounded like gibberish. His mind was a tornado, tearing apart everything that entered it until the pieces no longer matched. Words were meaningless. The only thing that mattered was Steve, _I have to find Steve, please, I have to find him…_

Despite the protests of the medical staff, Danny ducked and shoved his way out of the hall and into the reception room. Everything spun, too-clean shelves and clipboards and medical forms blurring in streaks of silver and white. Danny blinked away the tears that sprung, unbidden, to his eyes. A pain response. Natural and unavoidable. Inconvenient and disruptive.

One of the nurses, a young woman with kind eyes and a sharp voice, stood in front of the exit/entrance as Danny tried to escape sick bay once and for all. She slammed her back against the door, looking at him with a special kind of intensity. 

“I promised,” she said through gritted teeth. “I promised your partner I wouldn’t let anything else happen to you. Understand? I _promised._ ”

Her words finally reached Danny and stuck. The tornado in his mind died down. He stopped, swaying, in the middle of the reception room. He reached out, steadying himself against a metal freezer cart. _Huh._ So that was how he’d gotten to sick bay, then. Wheeled on a cart like a load of frozen meat. 

And that meant…

“Steve was here,” Danny said. His voice was still broken. It cracked in the middle; he fought the urge to clear his throat again. “My partner. Steve McGarrett. He was here.” It was a question, but he couldn’t ask it like one. That would mean leaving room for doubt. 

The nurse with the gentle eyes and fierce expression nodded. “Commander Steve McGarrett, that’s right. He brought you up here in critical condition. We managed to stop the bleeding and repair the internal damage, so I think you’ll be all right. But we just finished surgery about half an hour ago. We had to shut down the system monitoring your vitals, because I was afraid that Marks and the rest of them might have access to the medical monitoring system. They have access to everything, according to your partner. Every system on the ship. That’s why the alarms didn’t go off when you took out your IVs.”

Danny inhaled deeply. It hurt, but he forced himself to do it. He really needed the room to stop spinning. “Where did he go? My partner, Steve, where is he?”

The nurse glanced past Danny. He realized she was looking at the other nurse, and the Doctor, who stood behind him next to the reception desk. She shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “He went to take down Marks. I think. He gave me a code that he’ll broadcast once it’s safe to leave sick bay. Until then, he told us all to stay inside. ‘Don’t leave, under any circumstances.’ That’s what he said.”

“I think we should listen to your partner,” the doctor said. She was tall, blond, and bespectacled. When Danny glanced back at her, she had her arms crossed and her lips curved down in a half-frown. “If there’re terrorists out there, or drug dealers, or whatever they are, we’re safer in here. You know we are.”

“I’m safer with him,” Danny insisted. At first, it didn’t make any sense, even to himself. He was drugged up and down about half a pint of blood, so maybe that was it. But then again, it _did_ make sense, in a weird way. In that weird, batshit crazy way that most things about Danny and Steve’s relationship made sense even when they shouldn’t. It was like this: no matter the situation, Danny always felt safer with Steve. Not safer physically; usually it was the exact opposite. But safer about everything else. Because with Steve, Danny was real. He wasn’t waiting for something, stuck on the brink between happiness and misery, trying to make himself into someone he wasn’t. Not trying to please others or prove anything to anyone. He was just Danny, and Steve was just Steve. And that was what made them work. 

“Listen to me, I’m the only thing standing between Steve McGarrett and his untimely death-by-stupid-hero-complex. If you don’t let me go out there and find him _right now_ , something bad’s gonna happen. To all of us. All right? Okay? So please, and I’m only going to ask nicely once, move out of the way. Please.” The words were as rough and unsteady as Danny felt. But he got them out in the right order, and that was something.

The nurse glanced over at her two companions again. Danny watched the war behind her eyes as she weighed his words against whatever Steve had told her. “You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?” she said at last. There was an edge of defeat, of resignation, in her tone. 

Danny took another deep breath. The room stopped spinning for a second. “It’s not just that he’s my partner. It’s not just my responsibitly to keep him, and everyone else on this ship, safe. I love him. I love that crazy, irrational, incredible man—God help me—and I’m not about to sit around and wait for him to get himself killed.” Danny wasn’t quite sure why he said those things. They were true, but he wasn’t sure why he said them. These people were strangers. Strangers who had saved his life, but stranger nonetheless. 

And yet. He needed them to understand. He needed this woman to understand why he couldn’t just stand down. 

The nurse had tears in her eyes. Just the glossy beginnings of tears, perched on her lashes, but tears nonetheless. She bit her lip. A second passed. Then two. Then, slowly, she nodded. She stepped away from the door. “You’ll get yourself killed,” she said, her voice tight and nervous. “Please, don’t get yourself killed. Not when I promised to look after you. To keep you safe.”

Danny smiled. It hurt to smile, but he managed it. He needed this woman to know that she was making the right decision. That he would’ve made this decision for her anyway, if she’d refuse to let him by. “Don’t worry about me,” he told her. He tried for sincerity, and landed on sarcasm. “When you’re in love with Steve McGarrett, you get used to this kind of craziness. You can’t love him without loving that part of him, too. Even if you hate it, sometimes.”

She laughed. It was a nervous, slightly watery sound. She stepped back to stand beside the doctor and the other nurse, both of whom looked exceedingly dubious and irritable. 

“You know that we can’t let you leave in your condition,” the doctor said sternly. She reached for something on the table beside her—a syringe, Danny realized. “That was a nice speech, especially for someone as medicated as you are. But you can’t actually go anywhere. The only reason I’m not blocking you myself is I’m pretty sure you’ll pass out as soon as you get halfway to the elevator.”

Danny pulled his shoulders back. He tilted his chin up, smiling a little bigger. “Trust me.” He wrenched open the door. He stepped out into the brightly-lit hall, stumbling a bit as the ship rocked slightly. But he steadied himself, and remained stubbornly upright. “If there’s one thing that’ll keep me going until I’m six feet under—or wherever the hell I’m gonna end up dead someday—it’s knowing that Steve needs me. So if you wanna try and stop me, go ahead. But I don’t think you will.” Danny wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that last part. All he knew was that, doctors and drugs and knife wounds and poisoning and all, he was going to find Steve. 

No matter what.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I posted before this fic was deleted, so I'm all caught up again! I only have one more chapter written after this right now, so updates might be a lot slower from here on out. But I will definitely finish this fic, I promise, and I'll try to have the whole thing up by the end of Winter. 
> 
> A big, BIG thank you to everyone who has taken the time to comment/favorite/subscribe or leave kudos on this fic so far! I appreciate your feedback so very much. Y'all keep me inspired! <3


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first new chapter since this story was accidentally deleted. I hope y'all enjoy it, and I'll try to get the next chapter written ASAP. (Also, it's been a while since I wrote this story, so if there are any glaring plot holes or other mistakes, I apologize!) Again, a big thank you to everyone who has supported this story so far! I appreciate it more than I can say. <3

**Chapter Sixteen**

The only way to avoid the ship’s many security cameras was to stick to the vents. Although they were too narrow in places for Steve to pass, there were many blind zones where the cameras couldn’t see him; he took advantage of these spaces whenever he could. Thankfully, Marks and his team seemed to honestly believe that Steve was dead (and until they figured out that Danny was gone, it was unlikely that they would conduct another thorough search of the ship), so he didn’t run into any hostiles until he reached the morgue.

The morgue was dimly lit, cold, and cramped. When Steve silently removed the vent cover at the center of the room and dropped, cat-like, onto the metal floor, he found himself within striking distance of two men. They were dressed as ship security, and had their backs to him. One was looking at his phone. The other leaned against the doorway, yawning loudly.

“Hey.” Steve waited for the guards to spin around, reaching for their guns, and then took them out with two well-aimed hits to the chest and throat. He took their weapons, stashing their bodies in the overhead vent. 

Making his way to the far side of the morgue, Steve pulled out a pair of latex gloves that he’d taken from the ship’s sick bay. Putting them on, he carefully opened the silver drawers built into the wall. After a brief examination of the body bags stashed in ten of the fifteen slots, he discovered that eight contained neatly-wrapped blocks of cocaine, and two were full of illegal firearms. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he carefully documented the scene: all eight bags of coke, and two bags of black-market weapons. Then, being sure not to make any noise, he closed the drawers containing the drugs, and set aside the bags of guns. After all, his plan required a small arsenal. He was just glad (if that was the right word) that Marks and his team were smuggling weapons as well as drugs.

. . . . . .

Getting back up to the Crow’s Nest proved a bit of a challenge, especially since he was now carrying two bags of illegal firearms. Although he’d managed to disable the elevator cameras, Steve knew that Marks probably had people watching the halls, restaurants, lounges, and every other public space on the ship. So, once he’d taken the elevator all the way up, he’d have to avoid being seen, heard, or recognized while putting his very delicate plan into effect.

Luckily, the Crow’s Nest was virtually empty when Steve arrived. The day was waning; most guests were headed down to the dining rooms for diner. A few stragglers sat at the bar, while a handsome young waiter served them drinks. Making sure that his hat was pulled down to cover his face, Steve crossed to the bar. He sat down on one of the cherry-wood stools. 

“What’ll it be, sir?” the waiter asked, without even looking at Steve. He was too busy mixing a drink for one of his other customers. 

“First,” said Steve, in a low, barely-audible tone, “I want you to pass a note on a napkin to that group across the bar asking them to go back to their rooms. Right now.”

The waiter looked up. He stopped what he was doing, frowning. A little crease formed between his bright eyes. “Excuse me, but _what?_ ”

Steve met the waiter’s shocked look steadily. Still in a low tone, he said, “Ask me for my ID.”

“It’s all right, sir; you’re clearly old enough to—” 

“Just do it.”

The waiter swallowed. He nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said, and then in a stern, demanding voice, he added, “I’m going to need to see some ID before I can serve you anything, sir.”

Steve half-smiled. He reached into the pocket of his stolen security guard uniform. Tucked in beside his phone was his Five-0 badge and identification. He pulled out his ID, and handed it over. He studied the waiter’s shifting expressions as the young man took the card, staring down at it with surprise and confusion.

“I’m Commander Steve McGarrett with the Five-0 task force in Honolulu,” Steve explained. He spoke in a bare whisper, careful not to move his lips too much. He didn’t want anyone watching this room to get suspicious. “I know you heard what happened in the theater earlier. Everyone thinks it’s over, that the man responsible was apprehended, but they’re wrong. That man is playing them. But right now, he thinks me and my partner are dead, so this is our chance. We gotta act now.”

The waiter’s throat bobbed, and his eyes grew wide. He handed Steve’s ID back; as their fingers brushed, Steve could feel the kid’s hands shaking. “What do you want?” the waiter asked. He said it as casually as possible, as if were simply asking for Steve’s beverage order. But the flickering fear mixed with determination in his eyes told a different story.

Steve smiled at him. It seemed he’d made the right choice, approaching this guy. “I’ll have the biggest bottle of whatever you have back there, a cup of ice, and a glass stir stick.”

The waiter cocked an eyebrow, and looked like he wanted to ask why, but then shrugged, shook his head, and did as Steve asked. He handed over a massive bottle of champagne, a cup of ice cubes, and an elegant glass stir-stick. “Will that be all, sir?” he asked. His voice shook almost as much as his hands.

Steve stuck the stir-stick in the cup of ice, and picked up the champagne bottle by the neck. He reached into his back pocket, extracted the wallet he found there, and handed over two twenties. Glancing up, he nodded his head ever so slightly at the tourists still lingering across the bar. “Get them out of here,” he said. “I’m gonna spill this champagne everywhere; when I do, I want you to put up a ‘closed for maintenance’ sign, and keep everyone out while you clean up the spill. But first, head for the cleaning closet on this floor; you’ll find two big bags of guns stashed there. I want you to bring the smallest guns back here with your cleaning supplies—make sure not to let the cameras see you do it—and stash them in the cushions, under chairs, behind the bar, wherever you can find good hiding places. Understand?”

Mutely, the waiter nodded. “Yes. Thank you for the tip, sir. Have a good day.”

Steve nodded once: confirmation. “Oh, and be careful,” he said, before he slid off the bar stool and made for the exit, champagne and ice cubes in hand. “They’re loaded.”

Just before he reached the door, he knocked the cork out of the bottle. The champagne sprayed and fizzed out onto the elegant tiled dancefloor. With a loud sigh, he looked back at the waiter over his shoulder. “Sorry about that,” he said. “You should probably get it before someone slips.”

Pushing his way past the fancy glass doors labeled ‘CN’, Steve headed for the bathroom.

. . . . . .

As he’d hoped, the Crow’s Nest bathroom had everything he needed for the next phase of his plan. Under the sink was a large plastic bucket full of cleaning supplies. He found a bottle of bleach, as well as a funnel for pouring cleaning substances down uncooperative drains. 

He’d taken a full-face mask from the morgue; he strapped it on, pinching the metal strap tight around his nose. He couldn’t risk inhaling any noxious fumes. He’d done this before, so he knew the risks. Mask or no mask, this process was a dangerous one for everyone involved. No matter what, he was running the risk of poisoning himself before he could get around to poisoning any hostiles. He’d have to take his time, and do it right.

First, he poured the bottle of bleach into the plastic bucket. Next, he dumped the cup of ice cubes in, watching them bob and sink in the chemical soup. After a minute of searching, he found a glass-cleaning solution with a very high acetone content. He poured that in after the ice, using the glass stir-stick to mix the solution together. A white vapor began to rise off the surface of the toxic solution. Steve took a few steps back, shaking his head to clear the ringing from his ears. He was developing a headache; he’d have to leave the mixture to sit for about half an hour before he could come back into the room and collect the finished product—it would be better if he wasn’t breathing in potentially deadly fumes that entire time.

Leaving a ‘closed for maintenance’ sign on the bathroom door, he opened the hatch on the nearest ceiling vent and hoisted himself up and out of sight. That way, he could monitor the bathroom door (and make sure no unsuspecting tourists ignored the ‘closed’ sign and accidentally inhaled poison) until the chloroform in the bucket had fully formed.

. . . . . .

Thirty minutes later, Steve dropped down from the vent and reentered the bathroom. Thankfully, no one had come along in the meantime, or tried to use the bathroom regardless of the ‘closed’ sign, so his cover was still in-tact. Locking the door behind him, Steve readjusted the mask over his face, opening the stall he’d left the bucket in. He carefully carried the solution out into the light; using the drain-cleaning funnel, he cleared away the liquid in the bucket until only the white bubble of chloroform at the bottom remained. Using the utmost care, Steve captured the chloroform in the now-empty champagne bottle he’d gotten from the bar. He replaced the cork (which he’d picked up off the floor), sealing the noxious agent inside. 

He took off the mask and carried his newly-minted chemical weapon out into the hall. Through the thick, green-tinted glass of the bottle, there was no way even the most observant among Marks’ team would suspect that the liquid was anything but champagne.

Allowing himself a small, self-satisfied smile, Steve headed for the ship’s bridge.


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has commented/subscribed/left kudos on this fic so far! I appreciate y'all more than I can say. <3
> 
> I'm getting close to what could be the end of this story, so I want to ask y'all: is there anything you're hoping to see/want to see happen in the last few chapters? (Or are there any lose ends/plot points you want to see resolved that maybe I forgot about after this story was accidentally deleted, and if so, OOPS.) I want to make sure I don't leave any storylines or plot points unaddressed or unfinished by the end, because that is THE MOST FRUSTRATING THING in my experience! 
> 
> Again, thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has supported me and this story so far! Big love to you all. :)

**Chapter Seventeen**

Danny made it to the elevator, pressed the ‘ _up_ ’ button, and collapsed. His heart was beating so hard and fast he legitimately thought it might bruise his ribs. His lungs refused to inflate, and his head was throbbing relentlessly with every motion. He pressed a hand against the bandage on his side; his fingers came away stained faintly with red. Shit. He was bleeding again; it had already soaked through. Dimly, as unconsciousness threatened at the edges of his vision, he realized he still didn’t have a shirt on.

He didn’t make it inside when the elevator opened. Instead, he slumped against the wall, pressed his forehead to his knees, and breathed steadily through his nose. Everything hurt. He felt like he’d been thrown off a cliff, trampled by a herd of wild horses, and then half-drowned in acid. Although the toxin had been neutralized, it would take a while for the effects to wear off. 

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time. _Steve doesn’t have time…_

He must’ve passed out, because the next thing he knew, he was back in his white-sheeted hospital bed, staring up at blank white lights set in a blank white ceiling. Someone had changed his bandages, and covered him with a thick, warm blanket. Despite that, he shivered, clenching his hands into fists by his sides. His vision was blurry, and his head swam. Memories rose like bubbles in liquid soap, slow and simmering. “Steve,” he whispered. His voice was rough and hoarse.

“He’ll be fine,” a woman’s voice said. Turning his head as far as he could (which, considering how badly his neck hurt, wasn’t far at all), he recognized the nurse he’d spoken to earlier. Then one who’d told him that Steve was alive _._ Danny closed his eyes, and let himself relax for a fraction of a second.

“He’s not fine,” Danny mumbled. His lips wouldn’t move right, his tongue heavy in his mouth. He forced his eyes back open, and stared up at the ceiling. He willed himself to lift his head, but his muscles wouldn’t respond. What little strength his fear and adrenaline had given him was gone. He was bled dry, mentally and physically. “He went after Marks; how can he possibly be _fine?_ ”

The nurse smiled faintly, shrugging one shoulder. “Your partner, he seems like one of those guys who can walk anything off. I’d be more scared if I was Marks.”

Danny forced himself upright. He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Steadying himself as blood rushed to his head, he blinked a few times to clear his blurred vision. “Listen.” He ground his palms into the mattress, forcing back the wave of pain that shot through his body like liquid fire. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Listen, I know you’re just doing your job. He—Steve—asked you to keep me here. To keep me safe. I get that.”

“He did.” The nurse crossed her arms. She tilted her head, watching him. “So that’s what I’m gonna do. You’re my patient. I let you go once; I’m not going to do it again. Besides,” she added, with a small sigh, “didn’t you just prove that you’re not fit to go after anyone right now? You need rest. You need medicine. You don’t need to get in a firefight with a bunch of drug smugglers, or terrorists, or whatever they are.”

Danny laughed. It hurt, but he didn’t care. _Is this what it’s like_ , he wondered, _for Steve when I go off on him about some stupid, dangerous thing he wants to do?_

The nurse sighed loudly and rolled her eyes as he regained his feet. He felt stronger now, as if his brief relapse into unconsciousness had given him the energy he needed to put his plan (or lack thereof) into action. Or maybe the toxin’s effects were finally waning. He had no idea how much time had passed since his collapse, after all.

“Where are you going?” she asked, crossed her arms again. She lifted one eyebrow, frowning. “You do realize you still have no shirt, right?” A hint of humor colored her voice.

Danny crossed the room and pulled open the door. “I’ll find a robe, or something.” He leaned against the doorframe, breathing through the agony piercing his side. “Besides, it’s a cruise ship. People walk around in swimsuits all the time.”

The nurse passed one hand over her face. “Most of them don’t walk around shirtless with a near-fatal stab wound to the abdomen, though.” She was silent for a long moment, her expression partially concealed by her spread fingers. Then, finally, she let her hand drop. Her eyes held resignation and a little resentment. “Fine. There are some spare clothes in the supply room that might fit you.”

Danny let out his breath in a _whoosh_. His head spun, and his stomach churned, but his legs were surprisingly strong under him. The poison must be wearing off, then. “Thank you,” he said earnestly. “I mean it.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” She swept past him, heading down the hall toward the back of the med bay. “I still think this is a shit idea.”

_Me too,_ Danny thought. _But do I really have a choice?_ He tilted his head back, closing his eyes for a moment and concentrating on breathing evenly. It was still hard. His lungs felt constricted, and his body heavy, as if he’d been dipped in liquid lead and set to cool.

“Here.” The nurse shoved a wad of clothes into his arms. She’d returned surprisingly fast, or maybe time was running really weird for Danny right then. “Put these on. At least that way, I’ll know you’re keeping warm.”

Danny did as she told him. It was a slow, agonizing process, but he did his best not to let on how much pain he was in. He was beginning to wonder if this was her plan all along: get him to pass out while getting dressed, and then strap him back in his bed. Well, he resolved, that was _not_ going to happen. Steve was in danger. Steve was out there facing a notorious, deadly, and ruthless drug ring without backup. There was no way Danny was leaving him alone.

Danny finished dressing in five minutes. The longest, most painful five minutes of his life, his dramatic brain insisted, but he managed it. By the time he straightened up, pushing his hair away from his face, he (and his brand-new clothes) were drenched in pain-sweat. “Doesn’t matter,” he told the nurse, when she pointed that out. “Maybe I came from the spa, y’know? They have saunas on this ridiculous floating resort, don’t they? I’ll say it’s from that, if anyone asks.”

She bit her lip. He couldn’t tell if she was hiding a smile or biting back a frown. Maybe both. “You’re gonna say you went into a _sauna_ fully clothed?”

Danny shrugged. “I’m playing a tourist, all right? Maybe Russell Lancaster isn’t the brightest bulb.”

“What?”

“Oh. Russell Lancaster, that’s my cover identity. My partner and I, we were undercover as a married couple. Ross and Russell.” Danny let out his breath through his nose. He breathed in, fighting back the nausea and dizziness threatening to bring him to his knees. “Don’t give me that look; he picked the names.”

The nurse reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want to know why I’m helping you? Even though it goes against everything I’ve been trained to do?”

Danny smiled. He saw through her then. It was a great skill of his: reading people had always been easy, and this woman was no exception. “Because you know they’re right.” He watches confusion flit across her face, but before she can ask what he’s talking about, he continues: “The scientists and doctors and researchers who say that being with a loved one—someone you care about more than anything, that kind of forever love—is sometimes the one thing that can turn a critical case around. The power of love to heal, or whatever you wanna call it, can bring people back from the dead. Like what Steve did for me. So actually, what I’m saying right now, is that you’re not going against your training at all. Your intuition is telling you this is the right thing to do. And I’m telling you, too, that you’re right. This is the right call.”

The nurse sighed. She nodded. “My name’s Vicki,” she said, rather unexpected. She squeezed his shoulder once, then let go. “I just thought you should know. Before you go.”

“I’m Danny,” Danny said, rather unnecessarily. He was sure Steve had already told her that. “Detective Danny Williams with the Five-0 task force in Honolulu.”

Vicki nodded. She stood aside, gesturing through the doorway to the empty hall outside. “Well, Detective Williams with the Five-0 task force. You were halfway right about why I’m doing this. But honestly, the truth is: I saw the way he looked at you. And I heard the way you talked about him. I’m letting you go, not once, but twice, because this way, I’m not just saving one person. I’m saving you both. And, when it comes down to it, my job is to save as many people as I can.” Her smile was a little sad again. “I guess we have that in common, don’t we?”

Danny huffed a laugh. He nodded. “Yeah. Guess we do.” He stepped out into the hallway, and this time, his steps were strong and sure. He barely had to brace against the wall as he made his way back toward the lobby. Before he rounded the bend in the hall, he turned back to smile at Vicki over his shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

“Don’t mention it,” she replied. Then she added, with a wry smile, “I’m serious, don’t mention it. I could get in a lot of trouble for this.”

“Don’t worry, I’m great at keeping secrets.” Danny started to turn away again. 

“Oh, and Detective.” Vicki shut the door to his abandoned hospital room and placed a ‘ _don’t disturb_ ’ sign on the handle. “Good luck. I know you’ll find your partner. And I know you two will do everything you can to save this ship, and everyone aboard.”

“Well,” said Danny, “maybe not _everyone_.”

Vicki laughed. “You’re right. Give Marks and his crew hell, Detective Williams,” she said. 

“Will do.” Danny offered her one last smile. Then, careful to avoid crossing through the receptionist’s line of sight, he passed through the med bay lobby and out into the hallways beyond. 

. . . . . .

Danny headed for the Crow’s Nest. He wasn’t sure how or why, but something told him that’s where Steve would be. With his mind fuzzy from medications and his reflexes still questionable at best, he was going to have to trust his intuition if he wanted to find his partner and make it through this in one piece. 

He ran into Steve at the top of the elevator. Literally. He stepped out into the hall, and collided with his partner, who was dressed as a security guard and carrying a large bottle of champagne. With a shout, Steve fell against the wall, gripping the bottle tight against his chest as he reached for something strapped to his thigh. _A gun_ , Danny realized. He only had a moment to wonder where and how his insane partner had managed to get a fucking _gun_ on a fucking _cruise ship_ , and then that gun was in his face. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Danny put up his hands. He took an involuntary step back; the hallway leading from the Crow’s Nest to the ship’s top deck swayed around him. “Steve, it’s me, you animal!”

Steve had the gun back in its holster so fast Danny’s drugged-up brain had trouble tracking the motion. Still holding the champagne bottle in one hand, Steve stepped into Danny’s personal space. He put his free hand on Danny’s neck. His thumb fit in the crease below Danny’s ear where his jawline began. Steve’s fingers curled around the back of his neck, holding his head steady and keeping him grounded and centered. “What the _fuck_ ,” Steve growled, his face only inches from Danny’s, “are you doing here, Danny?”

Danny put both hands on Steve’s shoulders, pulling his body against his partner’s. “Y’know,” he shot back, “you’re pretty thick for someone planning to outwit a notorious crime boss, Steven.”

Steve’s hand was warm, his pulse racing against Danny’s neck. He knew that Steve could feel his heart racing, too, their veins full of red-hot adrenaline and euphoria. He’d known before that Steve was alive. That he couldn’t be dead. But seeing him, touching him, hearing his voice, it was something else entirely. Danny was drunk on it. 

“Danny, you almost _died_. Understand? I almost lost you.” Steve’s voice was low, intense. His expression was hard, his eyes dark with a tumultuous mix of emotion. “I could’ve… And I won’t _, I won’t_ … I can’t—”

“Yeah, well, guess what? Me either. I won’t either.” Danny leaned into Steve’s touch. He wrapped one arm around his partner’s waist, holding on. Holding them together. Two puzzle pieces whose ragged edges fit like gears. _Forged from the same star,_ Danny thought. _We’ve been together since always. No one’s ever gonna change that._

“Danny—” Steve started, but before he could protest further, Danny cut him off with a sharp shake of his head. 

“You know why I’m here,” Danny said, “and if you don’t, you’re an idiot.” 

Steve opened his mouth again. Danny saw his chance and took it. Tilting his chin up, he fisted one hand in the front of Steve’s security guard uniform and kissed him. 

Kissing Steve was like breathing in sunlight. Like holding the whole ocean in his hands. It was everything in a moment, birth and life and death and eternity, a lifetime of love passing between them like lightning down a wire. ‘Electrifying’ didn’t cover it. ‘Passionate’ didn’t come close. They were on another plain, another frequency. Just the two of them, stars caught in each other’s gravity, spiraling out of control. 

The moment passed. Steve held on tight after the kiss ended, brushing his lips against Danny’s once, twice, sending aftershocks racing through Danny’s body. Danny pulled back to look at Steve, and saw that his partner’s eyes were closed. He touched Steve’s cheek, and Steve opened his eyes. Danny smiled, and Steve inhaled shakily. “What was that?” Steve asked. As if he didn’t know.

“That was us,” Danny said. The only answer that made sense. Maybe it was his drugged-up brain playing tricks, or maybe it was the endorphins racing through his blood like electricity, but everything seemed suddenly, startlingly clear. “Wherever you go, babe, I’m there. This, us, it’s crazy. _We’re_ crazy. But I’ve been thinking, and maybe love is just two crazy people whose crazy fits together in all the right ways. Y’know?”

Steve grinned. Bright and full and so strikingly, infuriatingly beautiful Danny was afraid he’d never get his breath back. Steve leaned in and pressed their foreheads together. They stood there for a few silent seconds, breathing each other in. And then Steve said, “I love you so much it’s frustrating, Danny. You know that?”

Danny huffed a laugh. He did know. God, did he know. “You should try being in love with you, Steven. It’s no walk in the park, either.”

Steve laughed. He leaned in and kissed Danny again. It was over in a second, but Danny felt like he was about to faint again. Although that might’ve been due to the stab wound or the poison. “ _I’m_ hard to love?” Steve asked, teasing. “Is that right?”

“That’s right.” Danny closed his eyes, and savored the seconds swooping by like little birds flying up, up into a cloudless summer sky. _But it’s harder_ not _to love you,_ he didn’t say.

Finally, reluctantly, they separated. Steve kept his free hand on Danny’s shoulder as they headed away from the Crow’s Nest toward the top deck. “All right then, Danno,” Steve said. “If you’re gonna be a part of this mission, I guess you should know the plan.” He pulled open the door to the outer deck. The wind howled and wined as it swept into the hallway where they stood. Danny ducked his head against the buffeting force, wincing at the chill it carried. 

“Oh yes, I’d love to hear your plan.” Danny didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “I’m sure it’s very logical and well-thought-out. No crazy explosions or gunfights or shady homemade chemical weapons in champagne bottles, I’m sure.”

Steve grinned down at him. They made their way out into the windy, chilled evening air. “Hey, it’ll work, Danny,” he said. “I promise you.”

“Oh, he promises,” Danny said. “That’s good. I’m so reassured.”

Steve slid his arm around Danny’s back. Holding him up as the ship rocked beneath them. “I’ve got you,” he said. 

Danny smiled. He put an arm around Steve’s waist. They walked across the deck toward the stairway at the bow, touching from shoulder to hip. “I’ve got you, too,” he said.

Together, they started up the stairs toward the ship’s bridge, where Marks and his men lay in wait. Toward the battle that would decide the fate of everyone aboard the _MS Andromeda._

_This is it,_ Danny thought. A lance of anticipation and anxiety flashed through him. _This is where it ends._

  



	18. Chapter Eighteen

**Chapter Eighteen**

Steve crouched beside the door to the ship’s bridge. He and Danny stayed there, just out of sight, waiting. Danny was pressed to Steve’s side, his hand resting on Steve’s arm. The physical connection was reassuring. Although Steve had thought out every detail of his plan, he couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure it would work. So far, much of the mission had failed. But if they both managed to keep their heads (figuratively and literally), there was still a chance. They could pull this off. Things had gone from bad to worse, but recovering the situation was possible.

A tell-tale _beep_! alerted Steve to the fact that one of Marks’ security guys had just unlocked the door to the bridge. However, instead of jumping the guy and taking his fob, a move that was almost sure to get Marks’ attention, Steve held up a tiny device he’d pieced together using the radios in the emergency kit stored on the top deck. He held his breath and waited.

“What’s that supposed to do, huh?” Danny’s voice was barely audible through the howling wind. “We can’t use radios. Marks will hear us, remember?” 

Steve watched numbers flash across the tiny, green-lit screen on his makeshift device. “It’s not a radio, Danny.”

“What?” Danny followed Steve as he moved out of the shadows, catlike and graceful, and held the device up against the lock mechanism on the bridge door. “Please, enough with the cryptic spy routine. What is that thing?”

Steve smiled. He pressed a button on the device, and with a soft _beep_ , the light over the lock turned from red to green. He tried the handle; it swung open with ease. “I recorded the radio waves Marks’ guy used to open the lock mechanism,” he explained in an undertone. Ahead, a darkened passageway led toward a second unlocked door. Light crept under it like grasping white fingers. “I just have to play the signal back, and the lock opens.”

Danny made a soft, appreciative sound. “That’s useful. Does it work on everything?”

Steve pocketed the device. He shrugged. “Anything that uses rolling code,” he replied.

“Rolling code.” Danny followed him into the passageway. His voice was thick with sarcasm. “All right. That clears that up.” Side-by-side, they walked soundlessly toward the end of the corridor. Toward the unlocked door that was now the only thing between them and Marks. Marks, and a room full of high-value hostages…

Steve put a hand on the second door’s handle. He brushed his fingers lightly against it, checking for an electric charge. He wouldn’t put it past Marks to boobytrap the hell out of his hideout. Thankfully, the doorknob was not electrified. Steve gripped it tight in one hand, holding the chloroform bottle in the other. He left his gun in its holster. He wanted to avoid an exchange of fire, if he could help it. After all, Marks’ hostages consisted of the only people qualified to steer and manage the _MS Andromeda._ If any of that highly-trained crew were lost, it could be a disaster for everyone aboard.

Danny stood behind Steve, his back to the door. He’d already expressed his extreme disdain for Steve’s plan, but after being told he could either suck it up or go back to med bay, he’d finally shut up. Now, however, as they stood on the edge, Danny voiced (or rather, whispered) one last concern. “Steve, before we go in, I need you to know something,” he said, voice so low Steve barely caught the words.

“Not now, Danny.” Steve gritted his teeth. He wasn’t nervous. He didn’t have time for that; it was too dangerous, too much of a liability. But despite his lack of fear, adrenaline rushed through his veins. His vision was sharper. His chest thrummed with the electric beat of his hyperactive heart. “Listen, we did this already. And before you say it, no one’s gonna die. We’ll be fine, you hear me?”

“No,” Danny whispered, rather vehemently. “I can’t hear you, because you’re speaking like Marks is pressed up against the other side of that door, instead of on the other side of the room!”

Steve smiled again. He shook his head. “Look, I already know what you’re going to say. I love you, too.”

Danny started to say something, but it was cut off. Steve had already twisted the handle and thrown open the door. He’d thought this through. The more dramatic his entrance, the more unexpected, the longer he had before Marks and his men got their act together. So, with a loud, “Hey Marks, did you miss me?” he swaggered into the room, a grin on his face and the bottle of chloroform held high.

Marks stood by the ship’s control panel. He had a gun pressed to the _MS Andromeda’s_ captain’s ribs. He whirled around the instant Steve entered the room, taking quick and careful aim. “You.” His voice was low, and thick with disappointment. “I guess it was too much to hope that you’d really blown yourself all to fuck.”

Steve shrugged. He kept his fake grin in place, playing confident and unruffled. Which wasn’t too far from reality—honestly, he was just happy to know where things stood. To have his target in his sights again (so to speak.) “Well, y’know. I could’ve built a bomb. But where’s the fun in that?”

“I see plenty of fun in that,” Marks replied. He took a step toward Steve. His finger moved to the trigger, hovering like a wasp deciding where to sting. Steve fought the urge to look back over his shoulder, to see if Danny was keeping out of sight. He knew that, if their places were reversed, he would be having a damn hard time not getting involved right now. “But it’ll be just as fun to make you suffer, slowly, until you’re begging me to end you.” Marks matched Steve grin for grin. He stopped, a good ten feet from where Steve stood. Too far away for Steve to even think about grabbing his gun or engaging in hand-to-hand. “Until you wish you _had_ blown yourself up.”

Steve weighed the odds. The way things were going, there was a good chance his plan would work. He’d counted on Marks’ darker, less-sane side taking over in the face of his cavalier and confident reappearance. Steve had humiliated Marks. Had made him look incompetent, arrogant. And now, Marks wanted Steve to suffer. 

That was good, Steve told himself. That meant he’d take things slow. 

And slow meant Marks wouldn’t risk keeping his hostages in the room. Like Steve, he was relying on the bridge crew to get the _MS Andromeda_ safely to Seattle. Faced with a situation that could spiral out of control at any moment, Marks would have to choose: take Steve out now, or move his hostages and continue their standoff in the bridge.

Sure enough, Marks seemed to come to this exact conclusion. He jerked his head at one of his guards, who stood nearby, weapon raised and aimed at Steve’s chest. “Cander,” Marks barked, “take the prisoners out onto the top deck. Close off all exits and entrances. Make sure none of them get away or make any sound. Remind them what happens if they do.”

Cander glared at Steve. He dipped his head to Marks, with a muttered, “Yes, boss.” Turning his gun on the huddled hostages (there were seven in total: the captain, first mate, cruise director, three heads of staff, and an attendant who’d probably just been at the wrong place at the wrong time), he ushered them out into the corridor.

The corridor where Danny waited, silent and lethal, for Marks’ unsuspecting guard to open the door.

There was no sign of struggle. Danny must’ve put Candor down with calculated precision. Steve fought the urge to sigh with relief—he’d been a bit worried that his partner’s injuries and medicated state might put him off his game. But apparently Danny had it under control.

As soon as the corridor door slid shut on the hostages (and their new unauthorized chaperone), Marks turned his full attention back to Steve.

“I’m here to challenge you.” Steve chose his words carefully. Poking Marks’ weak spots with a red-hot verbal poker. “Based on your performance in Theater A earlier, I guessed you’d be interested in something with dramatic flair.”

Marks’ face contorted for a moment, his lips half-curved in a smile. “Ah.” He sighed. “Let me guess: just you and me, in a fight to the death. A bit cliché, isn’t it?”

Steve shrugged. “Well, yeah. But clichés are clichés for a reason, Marks.”

Marks’ eyes narrowed at the use of his real name. “And what do you propose, Commander?”

Steve’s grin widened. “You and me, we fight. But not to the death. Hand-to-hand, knives only. Whoever disarms the other first wins. If I win, you go to prison. If you win… I come and work for you.”

“And what is to stop me from killing you right now?” Marks jerked his gun up and down. “It would be the smart thing. Kill you and move on.” 

Steve shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah, it would be the smart thing. But you do the smart thing all the time, Marks. And I’m guessing you’re getting tired of all those easy wins. And y’know what else? I think that, if you wanted to kill me outright, I’d be dead. So I’m gonna ask you what you just asked me: what _is_ stopping you from killing me?”

Marks’ expression changed. His face relaxed, and he smiled easily. “Oh. Oh! I understand now. I was curious why you’d dare burst in here to face me without backup, and the bare minimum of weapons. But now I see: this is about your partner, isn’t it? My men killed him. He may have taken some of them down with him, but he’s dead. Isn’t he?”

Steve didn’t have to fake a reaction. Pain flashed through him, white-hot, as he relived that moment, like scalding water on an open wound, when he’d seen Danny lying bloodied and unconscious on that freezer room floor. The dread, the sickening thought that he was too late, _too late…_

Steve shook himself. He closed his eyes, then opened them, blinking rapidly. He pretended to sway, clutching his champagne bottle tighter in one hand. “You killed him.” He injected all his anger, his disgust, his cold disdain into three words. “Your men pulled the trigger, but you gave the order.”

Marks’ smile grew. He showed his teeth, triumphant. “Ha! No, I didn’t. They acted on their own. Your partner must’ve tried to escape. Too bad. He seemed like a good man, sacrificing himself for you like he did. I would’ve had fun ripping him apart, slowly, in front of you. Ah, well! This is the hand we’ve been dealt.”

“So are you playing the game?” Steve saw his opportunity and took it. He slurred his words just a little, playing up the ‘drunk and belligerent’ angle. “Or are you gonna take the easy way out? Again?”

“You want me to kill you?” Marks asked, cocking his head. He smirked. “I’m not going to make it that easy. You’ve made a mistake, Commander. This is going to be very, very painful. Good luck avenging your partner after I’m done with you.”

Outside, someone shouted. There was a moment of silence, and then three consecutive gunshots rang out on the floor below. _That came from the Crow’s Nest,_ Steve thought. _Danny and the crew found the guns!_

And, judging by the earlier-than-planned exchange of fire, Marks’ men had found Danny.

Slowly, Marks’ eyes grew cold. The smile slid off his face like an avalanche. He snarled, his finger coming to rest over the trigger. “You,” he hissed, baring his teeth like an animal. “What have you done?”

Steve realized what was about to happen a fraction of a second before it did. Diving to the side, he hurled the champagne bottle at Marks’ face with as much force as he could muster. The base struck Marks dead between the eyes. It exploded, chloroform spreading toxic fingers of mist through the air. In that same instant, Marks fired. The bullet spun through the chloroform and sank into Steve’s shoulder, four inches to the left of his heart. With a yell, Steve fell, flattening himself to the purple carpeted floor of the bridge.

The now-invisible mist spread. The chloroform was thick all around them. Marks fell to the floor. His eyes rolled back; Steve watched him collapse and begin to twitch. The infamous drug lord’s hand struck himself in the face, and his nose began to bleed freely. In moments, he was still and silent. Blood cascaded down his pale face like a flooding river.

From where Steve lay, it was impossible to tell if he was unconscious or dead.

Steve coughed. He tried desperately not to breathe; the agony in his shoulder made it hard to hold his breath when all he wanted to gasp through the pain... 

The haze descended around him. He couldn’t find his mask. Had he thrown it away? He hadn’t counted on this. He thought he’d have more time. He _needed_ more time…

As the chemicals entered his system, his thoughts blended together. His eyes closed against his will. His hand fell away from his wound, fingers sticky with blood. He rolled onto his back, the back of his head striking the thin carpet with a dull _thud._ Unable to hold his breath any longer, he inhaled deeply. 

In the next moment, he was out cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Midterm exams have been kicking my ass, but I finally got another chapter written! Yay! Even if it's a bit rough (I didn't really do much editing, and I don't have an editor, so all mistakes are my own!), it was a lot of fun to write. I hope y'all enjoyed it, and I'll get the next one up ASAP! :)
> 
> As always, a HUGE thank you to everyone who has supported this story so far! Your feedback is invaluable, and I appreciate each and every one of you so very much! <3


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**Chapter Nineteen**

Danny took out five of Marks’ men in under thirty seconds. Steve had told him that there would be upwards of fifteen guns, fully loaded, stashed in the Crow’s Nest, and he hadn’t been lying. Danny found them easily enough—he knew where they would be (taped under chairs, hidden beneath couch cushions, in the bar), which gave him a significant advantage over Marks’ guards. Knowing that Marks would have people on guard in the Crow’s Nest, he had told the bridge crew of the _MS Andromeda_ to wait for him in the hallway outside; he figured that if he could secure that room, they could defend it against Marks’ forces until Steve resolved the situation upstairs.

 _If_ Steve resolved it.

Danny shook his head _. Of course_ Steve could handle it, he told himself. It was Steve. Sure, his partner had come up with some of the craziest plans ever conceived by anyone ever on the whole planet, but somehow the insanity always seemed to pay off. Steve was a danger magnet, but he was also the luckiest person alive. 

Danny just hoped that luck would hold.

Just a few more minutes, and it would all be over.

The firefight lasted twenty seconds, max. Once Marks’ men were down, blood running from holes in their stolen uniforms, Danny ushered the startled, shaking bridge crew into the now-empty room. He moved the bodies behind the bar; he figured the crew would do better with the corpses out of sight. Danny, who had used the bar as cover, had avoided taking any hits. A good thing, too—with the recent poisoning and the knife wound in his side, he wasn’t sure how much more damage he could take.

“Okay. All right. Is everyone good? Anyone hit?” Danny asked the room at large.

The ship’s captain shook his head. He visually assessed his crew, then turned to Danny. “We’re all right. Shaken up, but we’ll live.”

“No injuries?”

The captain looked around at his crew again. “Are any of you hurt?” The crew shook their heads. “All clear,” said the captain.

Danny let out his breath. “Good. That’s good. Listen, I’m, uh, I’m gonna head back up to the bridge. You’re the captain; you know what to do. Can you take it from here?” He knew it was a lot to ask—the captain and his crew had just been through hell and back—but Danny had no choice. He couldn’t be one-hundred percent sure, but he thought he’d heard a distant, distinct gunshot mere moments after he’d finished his own rampage. Which meant that something had happened up on the bridge. Something not good.

The captain nodded. “We’ll manage. I’m sure people down below heard the gunshots; there could be panic on the lower decks.”

Danny bit his lip. In the heat of the moment, he hadn’t thought about that. “Right. Yeah. You should probably deal with that before things get out of hand. But look out; Marks might have more people working for him. Who knows what they’ll do now.”

The captain grunted his agreement. He stood on shaky legs, straightening his posture and clearing his throat roughly. “Thank you,” he said, and held out a hand for Danny to shake. Danny did. The captain’s grip was firm and warm, and his expression sincere as he said, “You saved our lives. And the lives of everyone aboard this ship, most likely.”

Danny nodded. But he wasn’t listening; not really. His attention was fixed intently on the sounds (or lack thereof) coming from the bridge overhead. “Thanks,” he said. “I mean, you’re welcome. No problem.”

The captain stepped back. “My security and I will handle the rest of the crew, Marks’ men, and the passengers from here on out,” he said. “You take care of Marks. And your partner.”

Danny took a deep breath. He released it in a gust, exhaling all the fear and anxiety swirling like smoke in his lungs. Choking him like a hand around his throat. “I will. I’ll see you when it’s over.”

“Yes,” said the captain. “You will. When you and your partner are finished with Marks, you are both cordially invited to the captain’s dinner. You will be our guests of honor.”

Danny nodded shortly. He wasn’t going to allow himself to think that far ahead yet. Not until he knew if— _that_ —Steve was okay.

Pushing the Crow’s Nest door open with his shoulder, Danny took off at a dead sprint down the hall, back out onto the wind-whipped top deck, and up the stairs to the bridge cabin.

. . . . . .

Danny entered the cabin cautiously. He couldn’t risk startling Marks in case the standoff hadn’t been resolved. But then he caught a glimpse of two bodies lying sprawled and motionless on the purple-carpeted floor, and he threw caution to the wind. His heart launched into his throat, pounding furiously, as he drew his gun and stepped into the room. 

Immediately, Danny’s head began to spin. His vision blurred, and he fell to his knees. _The chloroform!_ Steve must’ve released it, then. The next moment, Danny caught sight of Marks’ face, bloodied and slashed by shards of glass, and his suspicion was confirmed. Marks’ half-lidded eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. Clearly, the chemicals in that bottle, along with the glass shards sticking out of the drug lord’s face and neck, had killed him. Steve’s champagne bottle lay in pieces all around Marks’ fallen form. 

Danny held his breath, forcing his spinning senses to stabilize. His heart beat so hard and fast he was afraid it would break his ribs.

Because, if Marks was dead, then did that mean…?

 _NO!_ Danny caught sight of his partner’s still, bloodied body, and moved immediately to Steve’s side. He holstered his gun and pressed one hand desperately to the spreading red stain over his partner’s heart. For a heartrending, horrible, timeless moment, he thought, _This is it, it’s over. I’m too late to save him._ But then he felt Steve’s pulse, fast but strong, under his hands, and he almost cried aloud with relief. Pressing his fingers down hard, he concluded that Steve had been shot, but not in the chest, thank god. The bullet had struck his partner’s shoulder, most likely wedging between Steve’s collarbone and shoulder joint. Steve had already lost enough blood to knock him out (even if the air hadn’t been thick with chloroform) but as long as Danny got him to a doctor in a reasonable amount of time, he should be fine. 

In theory.

But there were other things to consider. Danny’s mind spun with possibilities. 

The thing that worried him most was Steve’s radiation poisoning. The combination of sickness caused by Steve’s medications, the poisoning itself, the gunshot wound, and now the homemade chloroform could be disastrous. 

Danny concluded that he needed to get Steve to the med center ASAP. No time to waste.

Which would mean getting his partner out of the bridge _before_ Danny passed out as well.

It was going to be a challenge. But Danny had no other choice; leaving Steve in here for even another minute wasn’t an option. No fucking way. If the chemicals in that bottle really had killed Marks, then Danny needed to get Steve out of the bridge immediately. 

“Steve!” He couldn’t help it—he let out his breath in a desperate bid to bring Steve back to consciousness. It did nothing, of course. Danny put a hand on Steve’s face, tracing the beautiful, chiseled features with the pad of his thumb. His heart ached. Closing his eyes, Danny summoned every remaining shred of energy in his own weakened body, and, forcing himself not to breathe, he hoisted Steve half upright, tucking his shoulder under his partner’s armpit. Leaving Marks behind, he half-dragged, half-carried Steve out of the bridge and onto the outer deck.


End file.
